


Is There A Subroutine for Serendipity?

by We_Have_Become_Anathema



Category: Shadowrun, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, And the biggest tag warning of all: SUPER SLOW UPDATES, Artificial Intelligence, Blood Drinking, Cyberpunk, Existential Crisis, F/M, Far too much angst, Gun fights, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Little bit of a Deus Ex flavour, Loads of snark, M/M, Male Bonding, More than a bit of a ShadowRun crossover, Pays homage to authors far more brilliant than myself, Pulp Science Fiction, SCIFI AU, Science Fiction, Smoking, Swearing, Violence, You have been warned. :3, witty reparte
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-01-25 21:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 62,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1663025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_Have_Become_Anathema/pseuds/We_Have_Become_Anathema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer wanted this to be a simple mission, meet his client, get their commission squared away, and get started on the job. Figures he'd get distracted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bodies crashed together in a caricature of intimacy, hands plastered to hips as groins slipped against each other to the resounding bass. Their motion did little to help the stagnation of the perfumed, sweat laden air. Drinks sloshed from drunken hands over cheap shoes, down plunging necklines, into glib mouths, and off supine youths. Through the entire tableau the feeling of hedonistic abandon reigned supreme, a den of iniquity where anything could be bought, sold, or borrowed. It was best policy in such a place to not glance towards the darkest corners if you were not ready to watch the rutting of indolence in heat.

Lucifer’s gaze never once flitted to those most carnal of pleasures.

He was on a mission, and lust hadn’t helped him on one of these, ever.

Blinking harder than normal brought up his Augmented Reality Interface, the ARI overlaying his vision and flooding his visual field with data. That woman was a known member of such and such a street gang, that man dealt in REM chips, that man in the back stocked Beetles for low prices but had a bad reputation for stripping off their safety parameters. None of these people were what he was looking for. He sighed and drummed his fingers on the sticky bar top, abstractly disgusted as the residue clung to his gloves. After this mission he’d have to launder everything he was wearing, or possibly just incinerate the lot.

A light blinked at the upper right corner of his vision as a new message entered his inbox, immediately reading off over his ARI.

**\--Luci, I know you’re debating eviscerating me for this mission right now, but trust me. Sources say your man will be there.**

Sighing to himself, he debated how he wanted to reply to their hacker, knowing the coward needed almost constant reassurance he wouldn’t kill him in his sleep. One of these days he’d drop this whole stupid team, dammit, but right now he still needed them. The streets of Seattle weren’t exactly a safe place for a Runner to go about in alone these days, so the team kept him in work and gave him a few half-way dependable allies to call in if anything went south. Of course his pride would never allow him to do that, but still, it was the illusion of a safety net that was useful.

 **//Shut your mouth, G4b3. You know I’m not going to kill you over a mission. Not like you chose where this guy shows up.** His lips moved soundlessly as his reply was compiled in his neural processor and transmitted out. No matter how hard he practiced, he’d never been able to get the hang of the ARI for correspondence, and with his attention divided he tended to uselessly mouth off like that. Probably some perverse side-effect of those years in Solitary. That would track.

**\--Right, well, that’s good to know. Oh hey, proximity alert, someone just flagged on the club’s sensors as a… holy Hell. GET OUT OF THERE! DEMON ACTIVITY, I REPEAT, DEMON ACTIVITY!**

Just like the little prick to spook at a little movement from the Nether. Lucifer scoffed and rolled his eyes, ignoring the hacker’s well-meaning warning. Really, he was able to take care of himself and a few demons wouldn’t be a problem. Besides, **//They won’t be interested in little old me. Stop being such a #(%* &#&%(%# ---LANGUAGE FILTER INITIATED. **Really? A language filter? That little hacker couldn’t take anything even mildly intimidating, it would seem.

**\--Did I mention that there are five of them?**

Lucifer blew out a breath, uncomfortable with the stifling atmosphere. A body sidled up to him, something long and lean and entirely too tall. He spared the individual a sidelong glance as he rested his leg back on the bar. Well, if that wasn’t a long, cool glass of water. His ARI beeped a few times halfheartedly, but he minimized whatever asinine warnings G4b3 was trying to send him so he could fully appreciate the man next to him. Well-toned muscles rippled over the man’s back as he leaned in to yell at the barkeep and Lucifer could practically smell the weapons training on the man, something in how he held himself.

When the man started to turn, drink in hand, he didn’t seem terribly surprised to see Lucifer staring at him. His slight height advantage made his smile appear a little thin, “Can I help you?”

“I doubt it.” Lucifer thought about twelve ways he could help the younger man, but he didn’t feel like being lewd with the man would be terribly appreciated. “Just looking.”

The man laughed, a sound too honest for this place, “Like what you see?”

“Haven’t seen anything quite like it before, so you’ll have to excuse me while I quantify just how it stacks up to my general standards.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a pretty slow processor if you need this much time to quantify that. Most people just sort of know instinctively.” There was a ghost of that laugh still in his words, peeking through like coding and wires. The man reached up and brushed his long bangs from his face and the light glinted off pale yellow eyes.

Definitely not your corn-bred variety of human.

“I like to think it’s what I do with my processer that’s more important than how fast it spins.”

**\--LUCIFER! Don’t minimize the ARI! You’re on a job, remember?**

Lucifer cursed quietly, a swift stream of Mandarin as the message flashed over his vision and obscured the man’s face. “Sorry, one second. Stupid ARIs always interrupting.” He noticed the man glance out at the dance floor again before perching on the bar stool next to him. “Just… hold that thought.” Blinking hard again, the ARI maximized over his vision again, angry messages littered everywhere. **//Calm down, little man. What’s so important? My alarms haven’t gone off yet for our contact, so what’s got your wires in a twist?**

**\--What has my… you have a lot of nerve. Those demons? Remember them? I’ve been monitoring their transitions and guess who they’re looking for?**

Who they were looking for? How the hell should he know? An arrow appeared in the middle of the room and swiveled around to point to his right. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the hacker’s antics, he turned to see just who their target was. Of fucking course it would have to be younger man who was still smiling at him with that hint of intrigue, the glowing yellow outline on his figure blazing bright enough to make him seem otherworldly.

**//Any idea as to why?**

**\--Who do you think I am? Of course I looked into that. He’s not registered on anything that I can find, but I did dig up this.**

A holo-screen popped up next to the man’s head, information decoding before his eyes from cascading streams of glowing binary. Winchester, Sam, highly dangerous hybrid. Reward: 50,000 cred, payable from Nether forces.

Shit. His first time being attracted to someone in ages and of course it’d be one of the damn kids wrapped up in the whole mess of the Conjoining.

“You’ve got demons on your trail,” he said apologetically.

Suddenly the man, Sam’s, eyes narrowed and the playfulness in his expression was gone. “After the reward then?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, kid. I might be a Runner, but your bounty isn’t even close to the low ball range of my commission fee.” It was almost cute how the kid bristled at that, and Lucifer had to work to keep from smiling. “Anyways, thought you might appreciate the heads up. I’d hate to see demons ruin your good looks.”

“Aw, do you really think I’m pretty?” Sam asked with exaggerated titillation.

At least he didn’t look ready to cram a frag grenade down his gullet anymore.

Lucifer chuffed. “Pretty enough that I’m debating doing something stupid.”

**\--Don’t Lucifer.**

“Really stupid.”

**\--Remember credits? We all like getting paid.**

Sam’s casual sip of his beer was slightly ruined by the way his eyes quickly scanned the crowd, “How stupid?”

**\--Remember that we’ve got a job and a client you need to meet up with?**

Lucifer licked his lips and gave the kid another once over. Yeah, he liked what he saw. This kid was going to muck everything up, wasn’t he? “REALLY stupid. How do you feel about upping your posted reward by a few hundred thousand?” And dammit if the way the kid smiled darkly back at him didn’t hit him below the belt.

“Sounds promising.” Sam downed the rest of his watered down beer and set his glass on the bar. “What do you have in mind?”

Pushing away from the bar, Lucifer reached out and touched Sam’s neural port over his left temple, instantly syncing up with the kid’s ARI. **//We’re going to get into a fight, draw attention, and get ourselves thrown out into the back alley.**

Sam raised an eyebrow but the realization of exactly what that would do swiftly dawned on his face. “You’ve got a flair for this, don’t you?”

Lucifer shrugged demurely. His punch came out of nowhere and connected with a wet snap as he broke Sam’s nose. **//Lesson 1: I’m a dick. Problem?**

Snarling like the animal he was, Sam was on him in an instant, eyes slipping to black. What he lacked in finesse, he more than made up for in natural talent as he hooked a leg behind Lucifer’s and brought them both down to the slippery, sweat stained floor. His knee rammed Lucifer’s breath right out of him, but instead of satisfaction at a pained look on the other man’s face, he suddenly found himself with his back on the disgusting floor and pain radiating from his left shoulder.

**//Dislocated.**

Another explosion of pain.

**//Back in place. Sorry about that, you’re heavier than you look and that’s never a nice way to get someone off of me.**

The barkeep pulled Lucifer off of Sam, several of the bouncers making it over and holding the heavily augmented man back. “This ain’t no underground fight scene, got me?” the burly man yelled. “I’m gonna have to ask you men to leave or my friends put a few rounds into your kneecaps and we toss you out.”

Lucifer held up his hands. “I’m cool… I’m cool.” Then he made another dive at Sam and with a calculated shift in his momentum managed to make it look like one of the bouncers had restrained his arm much more painfully than he had. Ah, how he’d missed making scenes like this. They did wonders for distracting people from the important things, like the fact that he’d just run a cracking subroutine on this imbecilic bouncer and gotten himself a nice little skim off the top of his account.

**\--Luce! The client just asked me what the hell is going on. I wish I had a better answer to give him. We’ve got a reputation to keep.**

Reputation? Oh, that was rich coming from the slimy little toad who wanted to call off the mission because a few demons wandered in. Well G4b3 could stew for a while, he had a hot piece of ass to save.

Another bouncer picked up Sam and escorted them both to the door, tossing them out into the street with a distinct lack of grace.

Sam started laughing as soon as the door slammed behind them, one hand resting on the brick of the nondescript building next to the club while the other gingerly felt at his lightly swollen nose. “This… this how you ask people out? Break their nose and dislocate their shoulder before getting demons on their tail?”

Lucifer shot him a lascivious grin before reaching over and snapping his nose back into place. “Only the one’s I really like. If you can’t take a little rough foreplay then I have no use of you, pansy.”

“I never said--,”

“WINCHESTER!” Demons burst through the door, their eyes as dark as Sam’s had been in his bloodlust.

**//Showtime. Try not to get killed, kid.**

“It’s Sam, not kid.”

**//Survive this and I might just think highly enough of you to keep that in mind. Kid.**

There were matching unhinged smiles on their faces as they rounded on their would-be ambushers. Lucifer drew out a segmented katana from somewhere, the lightweight weapon expanding to full length and locking into place moments before it was slicing through a demon’s neck, cutting it clean off. He fell down to a knee as a bullet passed through the air he’d just been occupying, it’s trail outlined in yellow as his ARI’s sensors screamed at him. **–INITIATING COMBAT AWARENESS-** A small circle appeared at the top left corner of his vision, the red blips warning him exactly where his enemies were coming from, and his onboard targeting systems began highlighting all weapons. He rolled forward and swung his arm out, cutting off another demon’s leg at the knee, warm blood spurting into his ashen blond hair. The guttural oath from the demon set his teeth on edge, demonspeak always having that effect on him.

Slipping his katana back in its hidden compartment, he drew out dual .45s and blasted away the two demons who were just about to pump him full of lead. Well high powered plasma rounds, but close enough. He quickly scanned his ARI map and saw that the fourth demon had run off and the last one was behind him with Sam. Shit, don’t let the kid be hurt.

Turning around to see if the kid needed help with the final demon, he found himself transfixed by the scene there. Sam had a demon by the throat, his teeth latched around the carotid artery in one of the most goram beautiful displays of aggression he’d ever seen. Then the kid fucking tore the demon’s throat open and started drinking up the blood that spilled forth like it was nectar.

Kid’s a junkie? Huh. Well, everyone had their addictions these days. Far be it from him to judge the kid over this one. Besides, if he remembered correctly hybrids got power from the blood of Nether beings.

Sam looked up at him as he kept on draining the demon with eyes as black as the starless night sky, and Lucifer felt something a hell of a lot stronger than a chill shoot down his spine. GORAMIT!

Before the demon was even quite dead, Sam reached out and grabbed Lucifer by the collar of his combat vest, pulling him in. Their mouths clashed together as the demon’s body slumped to the ground, still spurting a thin stream of blood that pooled at their feet. Sam dragged Lucifer back until a wall was at his back, hands roaming wildly up and down over Lucifer’s metal alloy arms. Combat models. “Anything in you still flesh and blood?” Sam growled.

Lucifer chuckled into Sam’s mouth before he pulled back and smirked. “Enough. Why? You got problems with augments?”

“I’ve got problems with older men who hit on me, kill three demons without so much as breaking a sweat, and then watch me like that while I’m downing blood.” He rushed forward to claim Lucifer’s mouth again, angry when he realized he was being held back. “Problems I think we should work through.”

This time Lucifer laughed outright. “Oh kid, no wait, Sammy. We’re going to work through a lot of problems, but this alley really isn’t the place.”

Demon blood coursing through Sam’s blood, it was still obvious to Lucifer’s ARI that the kid’s pupils were completely blown. “Where?”

“Never mind that. I also don’t take advantage of junkies when they’re high. Policy of mine to be chivalrous. I’m all about consent.”

Sam hitched his leg up between Lucifer’s and tried to overpower the immense power of the arm pining him to the wall. “I’m consenting. See this, very consensual. And that,” his eyes dropped to Lucifer’s groin, “agrees with me.”

“No, that gets hot and bothered every time I fight. Bad habit.” He wasn’t bothered by it in the least, special biomech inside his body keeping the flood of hormones from getting to his head. Even the adrenaline was being carefully controlled. “You obviously get hot and bothered by that blood, and I don’t consider that consent. Try again when your mouth doesn’t taste like sulfer, eh?” Halfway expecting the kid to whine, he was strangely proud at the way Sam just smiled wider and relaxed against the wall, dropping his leg back down. Kid had better control than he thought.

“Fine, when I’m not high as a kite then.” Sam reached forward and touched Lucifer’s neural port, almost a caress.

Ten digits flickered across Lucifer’s vision in tickertape. Son of a bitch just gave him his number. “Will you remember this when you’re not high as a kite?”

“Mmmmm, won’t be forgetting you any time soon.”

Lucifer let his arm down and contemplated walking away. A good man would have. Instead he mimicked Sam’s early move and dragged him in by his collar, one last bruising kiss for the road to muck up his hormone control for the night. Yeah, he wasn’t exactly a good man.

He didn’t even mind when the kid bit at his lip hard enough to make him bleed, at least his own blood didn’t taste like sulfur, but it certainly didn’t taste like copper either.

Instantly they were apart, Sam against the wall gasping hard, eyes back to nauseating yellow swirl. “What the hell are you?” He swiped a hand over his mouth as his other hand reached out instinctively toward Lucifer.

“Just a street samurai, nothing special.” Like hell Lucifer was going to tell the kid, but it sure was interesting to see the kid’s instant reaction to his own blood. And he wasn’t so naïve that he took that sudden eye change as a buzz kill. The way Sam was staring at him was a potent enough explanation that he wanted seconds. Could be dangerous with a kid like this. Too bad he lived for that. See? Once again, another damn mission munged up because he lusted after a hot piece of ass. G4b3 was going to throw a fit when he got back.

Turning on his heel, he started off down the shadowed alley, waving over his shoulder, “Maybe I’ll call you sometime.”

“You better,” Sam yelled after him.

As Lucifer jumped up to a fire escape and rebounded up onto the roof of the building across the street, a message crossed his vision.

**\\\At least tell me your name, jackass.**

**//Lucifer.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cr0wgrrl, this entire story is now your fault. I hope you enjoy it, because it sort of mutated from a regular little plot bunny to an Awakened Bunny Plot MONSTER. >:3

                “You know you’re certifiable!” G4b3 called out as the front door opened.

                Lucifer could already feel the headache coming on. “Is that so?” He pushed his shades up and resisted the urge to sigh.

                The shorter man came out into the main hallway, his cyborg bunny slippers and mug of peppermint hot cocoa severely cutting into his intimidation factor. Of course G4b3 couldn’t have been intimidating if he tried, but Lucifer was never going to tell him that. No need to go hurting the kid’s feelings.

                Gorammit, how did he end up with so many kids in his life? Well, G4b3 was thirty-something now, but he acted enough like a kid to count.

                “Yes, that is so.” Taking a sip of his steaming cocoa he hissed when it scalded his tongue, and his entire tableau was completed by him grimacing and fanning his tongue. “And why are you wearing your sunglasses at night?”

                Lucifer chuckled and patted G4b3’s head, the door slipping closed and locking behind him. “Vision’s augmented.” However he moved the shades up to rest on his head, revealing his artificial eyes, glacial and calculating. “I assume you’ll want to tell me why I’m insane this time, right?” He sidestepped his roommate and sat down in their mudroom, fingers hooking into his laces with a fury. Too many hours in these combat boots and his feet felt like they were swimming after all the rain. Hmmm, need to buy better socks. No need to rust up his latest orthopaedic prosthetics.

                “—and you’re not even listening to me, are you?”

                He looked up and smiled lackadaisically, not in the least bit apologetic that he’d gotten distracted. “Not a word.”

                “You’re incorrigible.”

                “So I’ve been told.”

                G4b3 rolled his eyes and leaned against the dingy wall. “I’ll try again now that I have your attention. You cost us that job, and for what? A hot piece of ass who you then decided to not even take advantage of.”

                “And how would you know that?” Lucifer asked with a good notion of just how he had. “You monitoring my visual feed again? I thought you were done hacking my optics.”

                The replying smirk on G4b3’s face was answer enough, “Well, when you stop listening to my hails, what am I supposed to do?”

                “I expect you,” he grunted as he pulled the boot off, “to respect my privacy, or at least pretend you do.”

                Waving off the complaint, G4b3 took a tentative sip from his cocoa and didn’t hiss this time. Temperature must have been right finally. “I’d almost forgot you’re such a… gentleman. Thought that had been beaten out of you.”

                Lucifer looked up at that, hands clenched around his second boot in a death grip. “If I did, that’d be letting them win,” he said through thin lips.

Thankfully the brunette took the hint and skittered away like the spineless coward he was.

No, that wasn’t quite fair. G4b3 had his good points and would fight the battles of his choosing. Wasn’t the kid’s fault he wasn’t built to defend himself physically; probably contributed to why he’d taken up the hacking in the first place, finally a battle he could win at. And all the tricks he could play on the unsuspecting.

Running his good hand through his hair and placing his sunglasses back in their vest pocket, he stood up and took a moment to centre himself again. G4b3 was right about one thing though, they had beaten a lot out of him. He prided himself on the portions of his mind and personality he’d managed to hold onto, but those were becoming preciously rare commodities.

Blinking hard he checked the net, glad when the ARI didn’t show any new wanted posters with his face plastered over the official channels. “Oh, G4b3,” his prosthetics clicked unnaturally on the syntho-wood flooring, a distinctly insectoid sound, “you should get ready to thank me.”

G4b3 was already jacked back into his command centre, eyes unfocused as he interfaced with a binary world. “Hmmm?”

Lucifer held up a mem stick between two fingers, flipping it out like a card over onto his desk. “Apparently my chivalry impressed our client.”

That got his attention. G4b3 unplugged and swivelled around in his chair, naked admiration in his appraisal. “How the hell did you work that out?”

With a knowing smirk, Lucifer went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Ah yes, protein mash, protein gruel, and his personal favourite… yeast surprise. Apparently they were out of synthesized foods again. “When was the last time you went shopping?”

“Um, never?” G4b3 stood at the doorway, the mem stick held protectively and dive jack trailing out from his temple like an umbilical cord. “You know that. I’d only buy candy if you trusted me with the finances.”

That was true. Kid had a hellacious sweet tooth. The thought of what G4b3 would fill their pantry with was enough to give him nightmares.

“But really, Luci, how in the world did you arrange this?”

Yeast surprise it is. Hmmm, some sort of chow mein noodles? Lucifer grabbed chop sticks, “You didn’t honestly think I was blowing off the job, did you?”

G4b3 rolled his eyes, the iris implants winking as the light hit them.

“Your faith in me is really comforting.” Well, at least the noodles didn’t taste as rancid as those yeast mashed potatoes had. “I had kept my eye out during the fight for the client, and after I’d decided to protect the kid’s virtue, I simply called him up and apologized for any inconvenience caused by my helping the kid loose a tail. Apparently he thought that if I would fight that hard to protect a stranger; I would probably fight even harder for a client.”

“Silver tongued devil,” G4b3 griped.

“The social interaction augment does come in handy on a regular basis.”

“That guy was right to ask if there was anything of yours that was natural.” G4b3 ducked as several noodles were lobbed in his general direction, chop sticks not the most accurate of weapons.

Lucifer chewed, “What counts is still mine.”

“I hear some guys are into augmented—,“ G4b3’s face was suddenly introduced to Lucifer’s palm, cool metal fingers clamped over his cheeks.

“I’d stop there if you don’t want me to find some demons to feed you to.” Not that his augmentations were a sore spot, but a man had his pride to defend. And the amount of his body that was no longer his own was getting higher every year. “Besides, you have a mem chip to decipher and a job to research.” A good, paying gig that would keep his mind off unnecessary complication like lanky young men with unhealthy appetites. Last thing he needed right now was another mouth to feed or another head to look after.

G4b3 saluted him before prying his fingers off his face. “Your grip is like a face-hugger, freak.” Retreating in a flurry of bunny slippers, he went back to his command station.

Lucifer watched him get started on the lengthy project for a minute before losing interest, and he drifted over to the window in the main room. Light from the neon signs filtered into the room in slats of multi-coloured illumination through the venetian blinds, dust motes dancing in the recycled air. Closing his mind to what was happening he focused on the world out there, the light drizzle hitting the glass, rivulets tracing chaotic paths towards the ground, endless masses passing on ground level, an advertising zeppelin shining floodlights into the clouds. Pushing up a portion of the shades, he zoomed in to watch someone duck under an awning and pull out an actual paper newspaper. Antiquated much? More than a few of the people on the street noticed the oddity. A slight whir sounded as he zoomed in again and scanned the stories on the paper.

Those didn’t match up with any current stories in any of the major publications. He scanned the paper and found the date wasn’t current. Now wasn’t that queer. Perhaps it was his paranoia kicking in, but this didn’t track. Turning his attention to the man’s face, he brought up the ARI and began running facial recognition. “G4b3, might be nothing, but we’ve got a character downstairs.” He grabbed another bite of his noodles and chewed thoughtfully.

“Busy right now, Luci. If he’s actually a threat, mind keeping the hostilities outside?”

Oh yes, such a concerned individual, that boy. G4b3 would probably let him bleed out if he was in the middle of a project, which conveniently would allow him to hide from any fighting at the same time.

His ARI pinged, two faces overlaying a Chinese laundromat. Apparently their out-of-print reading individual was a member of Hell’s Army, led by one Mischa. Gorammit, he’d never cared for the Russian mob. Then again, with who their client was, it made sense. “I think he’s here to talk, be right back.” Without worrying about putting on his boots, he stepped out of the apartment and ducked out into the rain. Sure enough, the minute he was street level the man folded his paper and locked gazes with Lucifer.

“Ah, Morningstar, I presume?” the man asked, Russian accent heavy in his words.

Lucifer frowned and filtered out half of the information flooding his ARI, paring it down to combat essentials. “I haven’t been called that in a long time. Not too many around left who remember that name belongs to me.”

The man smiled and it was all canines, “I make it a point to research.”

“Didn’t know the files were still around to research then.” That particular epithet rankled him to hear, bringing with it far too many memories. “You’re starting off on the wrong foot if you don’t want this to get ugly.”

“Da? My apologies.” Extending a hand, “Azazel.”

Taking the mobster’s hand, Lucifer shook it with a little more force than was strictly necessary. “Lucifer. Care to tell me why you’re here?”

Azazel didn’t even blink at the bone crushing force, “Certainly. There’s been a little internal… rearranging in Hell’s Army, and I’m afraid the man who wanted to hire your services is--.”

                “Dead?”

                “Indisposed. I’ll be handling the negotiations now.”

                This was beginning to sound troublesome. “Indeed? And you decided to come to my place to tell me this? Your contact man had my ARI address.”

                The drizzle was beginning to intensify as a wind sprang up, driving the rain under their small awning. Azazel grimaced as water splashed onto his shoulder, “Digital communication can be traced far too easily, and lack a personal touch. Shall we take this inside?”

                Lucifer considered crossing his arms and standing his ground, simply for obstinacy’s sake, but thought better of it. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t invite you into my place.” Instead he started for a vid shop a few doors down; usually empty at this time of the night. “So, Azazel, you know who I am and something of my history, that means you’re more perceptive than most. No matter what channels you went through to find out about my past, you had to have an inkling that I was someone more important than just a street samurai for hire. Perhaps you’d like to tell me why that is?” He held open the door for the mobster, watching him like a hawk.

                “Of course.” The predatory smile returned to his face, and in the light of the decrepit shop the man’s eyes shone a jaundiced sulphur. “I have every intention that this should be the beginning of a healthy business relationship.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of a breast pocket and tapped it against the meat of his palm. “Want one?”

                He denied politely.

                “I happen to have known who you were because I remember the Eden Project right after the Conjoining. You could say that I saw your name and searched your profile, I found I knew your face. There are some who are still looking for you, you know.” Azazel’s tone was conversational enough but there was more than enough of either a threat or warning to put Lucifer on edge.

                “And which side do you fall on among those looking for me?”

                “Who says I’ve been looking for you?” he asked almost coyly. Lighting up his cigarette, the flame danced in his eyes and they flowed in languid fashion.

                “Give me some credit, Azazel.” Lucifer tapped his temple, his SIA reading enough data off to him that he could practically tell what the other man was thinking. “Social interaction augments have come a long ways, and mine says that you’re practically a kid on Christmas morning over finding me.”

                The Russian took a drag from his cigarette, “Apologies. It’s not every day however when I come across a visionary such as yourself.”

                Visionary? Funny, he certainly never felt like one. “I disagreed with the project and that makes me a visionary?”

                “You were willing to see a different future than the establishment, and that is a rare trait in our society of mass produced sheep.” Azazel blew smoke out his nostrils, the white vapour curling elegantly in the stale air. “The way I see it, you were the one in the right. I had thought you died in Solitary. They locked up your records after that.”

                “You sound like your interest in me is more than a passing fancy or a historian’s curiosity.” It sounded like Azazel might just want to buck more of the system than just who sat at the head of the table for Hell’s Army. “Does that have anything to do with this job?”

                Azazel’s lips curled up around his cigarette, “Perceptive as ever. I was a test subject, although not as high up as any of you Archangels. I wanted to fight with you but,” he gestured towards his body as if that explained anything. “But now I have the chance to at least work with you. The job isn’t directly related to the Eden Project.”

                “Directly,” Lucifer repeated, all too sceptical. There was too much about this job that was pulling at bad memories already, and he didn’t need any reason to revisit that chapter of his past. “Get to the point.”

                “During the Eden Project, the Mayans were contributing funding in return for a steady stream of research files. I need you and your team to find the files for a specific subject. Sadly I don’t know his or her name, only the codename their project went under.” He flicked ash onto the floor, “They’re the key to, well, everything the Eden Project stood for. The catalyst for it all.”

                Lucifer narrowed his eyes, “A subject who would be the catalyst?” He remembered more than he wanted to let on, and was rather certain he already knew the codename for that project. “Now what would a lowly demon like you want with them?”

                Azazel’s eyes flicked to black and he smirked, “Picked up on that?”

                “When I saw you across the street.”

                The black bled out, revealing white and stormy yellows again. “I wouldn’t expect any less from the Morningstar. But to answer your question, I want to make it possible for you to win the war.”

                “A war I haven’t fought in years?” Shifting his weight, Lucifer frowned.

                “Call me a dreamer, but finding out you’re alive gives me hope.” Azazel’s cigarette burned bright in the gloomy shop, “Give the word and I could have an entire network set up to assist you.”

                All duplicity aside, Lucifer found himself liking the Russian demon. Sure, he was inadvertently traipsing over all the raw nerves of his past, but he seemed to honestly believe in what Lucifer had once fought for; and that begged the question if perhaps his time in Solitary hadn’t robbed him of more than just the majority of his sanity. “I won’t promise anything until my team has a chance to look over the details.”

                Azazel nodded, dropping his cigarette and stubbing it out with his shoe. “Certainly. I’ll wait for your call.”

                As the mobster left, Lucifer’s mind turned to the other person who was waiting on his call. To complicate matters right before a possible job or not? Gorammit.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as I really hate stringing out updates, you guys just get a bevy of updates all at once. . .

Undecipherable noises filtered over the call, video contact only showing a darkened room.

Lucifer wondered if perhaps regular people slept at three in the morning. He’d held off calling the kid for three days, but who was he kidding? It wasn’t often he found someone who struck his fancy and he needed something to blow steam off with while his team debated back and forth if they wanted to take the job.

Finally a blurry shape appeared in front of the screen and a light flicked on, “Yeah? Hello?” Sam was there, hair tussled and eyes still glued closed with sleep. There was still a light yellow bruise at the base of the kid’s nose left from when Lucifer had broken it. Good, it would heal up nicely.

Chuffing at the sight, Lucifer couldn’t help his smile, “Morning, Sleeping Beauty. I take it I woke you?”

At the sound of his voice Sam’s eyes shot open, and he stared at the screen with something akin to horror. “Shit! You’re real.”

“Not quite the response I was hoping for,” Lucifer replied, using humour to mask his momentary annoyance at the younger man’s reaction, “but it’s starting to sound like I made a wise decision in not taking you home while you were high on demon blood then.”

Sam licked his lips and glanced back at the darkened bedroom behind him. “Just a second, I’m going to transfer you to another room. Just… stay there.”

The slight desperation in the young man’s voice made it seem that maybe this wasn’t quite the disaster it seemed to be. Lucifer waited patiently until a new room was shown and Sam returned to the screen.

“Listen, Lucifer right? I…”

“Company’s over?” he asked.

Sam nodded sheepishly. “My girlfriend.”

Ah, that would explain some of this. “I see.”

“No, it’s not like that. I mean it is, but, it’s not?”

The poor man sounded almost more confused than Lucifer felt. “Let me guess. You had already had a few drinks before I saw you, and you’re naturally flirtatious. Then you got worked up fighting the demons and downed some blood which had you flying, and I looked like a good idea just then. Right so far?”

Sam ran a hand through his hair, pulling his bangs out of his face, probably a nervous habit. “Not exactly.”

Lucifer smiled politely, not put off in the least. This certainly wasn’t the first time his policy of not taking advantage of inebriated individuals had saved other’s relationships. “Oh?”

“You’re right that I wasn’t exactly sober that night, but it’s not like I’m suddenly having a sexual crisis here. It’s just that Madison deserves better than… I mean… her last boyfriend cheated on her and it broke her up pretty bad.” There was a gentleness to the man now that hadn’t been there before, or perhaps it had only been obscured by the intoxicants. It made him seem years younger.

Too young by far to get caught up in the nightmare that was Lucifer’s life. “I understand. You care about her and while you’re wildly attracted to me, you’re not the sort to run around behind her back.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

They both sat in silence and Lucifer observed the room behind Sam. Nice place. Kid had done well, or perhaps it was his girlfriend who had the money. “Well then, it was a pleasure meeting you Sam, and I’ll remove the temptation from in front of you.”

“No,” Sam said instantly, looking angry at himself even as he said it. “I mean, I have your phone number now, so the temptation would still be right there.”

“Delete it?”

“I’m not known for great impulse control,” he said with a smirk, looking too flirtatious for a man who’d just said he couldn’t cheat on his girlfriend.

“Have the impulse be to delete the number and be done with it. I’m not looking for complications, Sam. I thought you were unattached, and I don’t exactly play second fiddle well.” Perhaps that was harsh, but Lucifer valued honesty over coddling people. Not that he had necessarily even thought of starting anything serious with Sam, but he didn’t share well; and he had a sneaking suspicion that if he had started anything with Sam he wouldn’t have wanted to let him go.

Sam seemed to consider that, a hand poised to end the call. The hand didn’t move. “I should.”

“Yes, you should.”

A voice called out in the background, feminine and alluring.

The call ended and Lucifer smiled at the blackened screen. “Good for you, kid.” He didn’t begrudge the man for choosing to stay with his girlfriend over a stranger he’d met once at a club. Besides, relationships were complications. Messy, lust filled complications. He sat back and swore softly. It’d been too long since he’d had a good complication.

Then again – he checked the call log and saw that Sam hadn’t deleted its record. So the number was still there. Maybe the kid would change his mind later, but for right now there was a possible job to focus on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Screw chapter summaries. I'm a Shadowrunning rebel who don't got time for that... *Puts on shades*

“I say we take the job,” Lilith said from her resident position draped over the arm of the couch and staring upside down at the others, the curled trusses of her platinum blonde hair brushing the floorboards. On anyone else the pose would have looked ridiculous, but she somehow pulled it off. She had a way of pulling off anything, often her clothing. It was an effective battle strategy. “I mean, this Azazel seems pretty clued into the past, and we could use an ally who might actually cover our asses for once.” She pursed her lips and shot a glare at the fourth member of their team.

“Just what are you trying to accuse me of?” Castiel asked, his frown would have passed as petulant on a more emotional person.

“Exactly what I said. I didn’t see you there trying to bust Lucifer free when the Consortium had him.” There was deep-set distrust in her words.

Castiel’s frown deepened, “Unlike some of you, my project wasn’t finished that early. I was barely able to remember my own name, let alone pick sides in the war.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Lucifer leaned back further into the couch and rubbed at his temples, having to settle for massaging around the edges of his implants. “As much fun as it is to have everyone walk down memory lane together, let’s stay focused on the topic at hand. Do we take this job or not.”

G4b3 looked up from his terminal, “My vote is yes. I mean, all this Azazel wants is the files on this mystery test subject, right? Not exactly the hardest job we’ve ever been asked to pull off.”

“And that’s why you’re still living with Lucifer, you little dreamer,” Lilith spat. “Anything related to the Eden Project is still going to be locked down tight, never mind that almost thrity years have passed.”

He could mediate this, as per usual, but tonight Lucifer just didn’t feel like it. Let the children all duke it out. The sensation of eyes on him itched at his skin and he raised one eyelid, optic cameras adjusting to the sudden light. Castiel was staring at him. “Yes?”

“You’re the one who this would affect the most if they realize you’re looking for the files, right?”

Damn. With how quiet Castiel always was, he often forgot just how perceptive the man was. “I suppose so.” It was an angle of this that he’d be going over back and forth for days now. If any of the Consortium realized that he was looking into any data from the Eden Project, he’d be in Solitary again before you could so much as blink. Or worse. “They get touchy when it comes to me.”

That brought a smile to Lilith and she sat up, her cascading waves of hair and pert breasts bouncing as she resettled herself. “That’s because they’re intimidated by you. You’re the only one who honestly could pose a threat to them. I mean, you could bring down the whole order, restructure this corrupt mega-corporation mess.”

Lucifer laughed mirthlessly, “Don’t make me out to be some sort of saviour, Lilith. I simply didn’t want to be used by them, and I didn’t agree with their plans.”

Castiel still looked at him sceptically, obviously wanting to discuss something else in private.

“Listen, G4b3, how likely is it that you could get the files without getting detected?”

G4b3 snorted, taking the question as a challenge.

“So, unless anyone has sincere objections to this job, we need to come to a decision. We’ve already waited five days debating it, and I don’t like leaving clients alone that long, they tend to find other teams to do the work for them.”

None of the others said anything as they all exchanged glances.

Nodding as he pushed up from the couch, Lucifer smiled sadly. “Well then, G4b3 tell them we’ll take the job. Do they have a deadline when they want the files by?”

G4b3 shook his head, “Only thing that Azazel specifies in here is that we get the complete files on the subject, preferably without the notice of the Consortium.”

“I don’t think any of us want the wrath of the Consortium coming down on our heads. The mega-corporations don’t hold the Consortium in as high a position as it once was, but I doubt it’d take long at all for them to resume operations if we give them a good enough reason.” That thought was far more unsettling than he was willing to let on. Dim memories of his cage-like cell inside Solitary flit through his mind, definitely not people he wanted to lose against a second time. He plumbed his own feelings on the matter, wondering where his vitriolic abomination he’d once felt towards them had gone. In its place he felt only the cool calculating collation of data, understood with a surety that he would one day bring down the world order they’d raised but his timing needed to be perfect. “Well then, anything else? If not, I’ll have G4b3 contact you two once we have a little better of plan for how we’re going to steal high security files from a shadow council.”

G4b3 slapped his hands together and rubbed them, obviously excited to have some nefarious and highly illegal activities to engage in. “Shiny.”

Lilith stood up and her aura subtly changed as she got ready to go back out into crowds, her eyes paling as she focused her internal magics. “A pleasure to see you, Lucifer, as always.” She kissed his cheek, and then she was leaving in her sensuous way, hips swaying exaggeratedly. In moments the metahuman was gone and only her faint perfume of autumn showers lingered.

“She does know that you’re not getting back together just because she flaunts her rather considerable assets, right?” G4b3 asked as his fingers flew over his holo-keyboard, soundlessly.

“She’s lonely,” Castiel added, ever the fount of unexpected insight.

“She is.” Lucifer looked between the two younger men, feeling suddenly old. “But don’t hold it against her, G4b3.” He understood far too well what isolation did to people, especially in the midst of a crowd. Lilith was a beautiful woman who had a foot in both worlds and no one to give her a reason to pick either. That could be a dangerous position. They had given it a fair go together but it hadn’t worked, and in retrospect he saw that he thought higher of her now because of it. She still flirted with the idea of getting together and occasionally they spent a night together when silicone and chrome veneers reminded them they were alone, but neither of them was deluded into believing it was more than that.

Castiel broke into his musings by walking over and clearing his throat. “Will you see me to the street?”

G4b3 was lost in his work and didn’t look up.

Lucifer nodded, knowing that his quiet associate had something important to say.

They left the apartment and started down the stairs, rust stains dripping from the bolts that held the stairwell suspended in place between the conjoined apartment complexes. Perhaps it had once looked stylish, but with everyone these days overlaying their own dreams onto reality, no one cared for the buildings’ upkeep. Lucifer didn’t care for ARI overlays like that, preferring the cold, unfeeling collapse of the city to imaginary glamour; besides, there was something comforting in the crumbling concrete and broken windows. There was honesty to it.

Castiel stopped midway down the stairs, suspended fifty feet over the busy street below. His pale hands gripped the gnarled railing at his sides and he looked too holy for this fallen town. Thirty four, not a single augmentation on him, not even neural implants, and the man seemed like a relic from another age. It often confused people how such a man could be an efficient Runner but his shamanistic powers were unrivalled and more than enough to make up for his ‘fragile’ body. “Lucifer,” he started, gravelly voice barely carrying the short distance between them, “I don’t think we should take this job.”

He’d been expecting this. Their shaman didn’t like arguing with the others, or explaining his particular insights to anyone other than Lucifer.

“Wind is worried about you. Something is developing in the Matrix and the elements don’t trust it.”

It was par for the course as far as vague intuitional warnings went, but Lucifer appreciated it for what it was. “Wind doesn’t speak to you much lately; this must be serious if it’s chosen now to say something.”

Castiel nodded.

Wasn’t this just the sort of thing they didn’t need. “Something in the Matrix?” What he wouldn’t give for a real technopath to consult on this. G4b3 was skilled, but technology was a game to him, it didn’t talk to him. “You know that we need this job.”

He nodded again, obviously understanding before he’d brought it up that it would change nothing.

“If you can ask the Elements for any other insight, I’d appreciate it. Something tells me this job is going to go sideways before everything is said and done.” Lucifer reached out and gripped Castiel’s shoulder amicably. “Thank you, Cas.”

Letting out a sigh Castiel tried to smile, marginally succeeding. “It’s my pleasure, Lucifer.” Then he turned around and finished his way down the stairs, a wind playing with his unruly hair that didn’t seem to touch anyone else.

Lucifer chuckled as he watched Castiel’s trench coat billow majestically before disappearing into the crush of humanity.

So, Wind was trying to warn him, a demon from the Eden Project had hired his team, and something might be brewing in the Matrix? He looked up at the slate grey sky, the even cloud covering not immediately promising rain. This job was starting to shape up into a real pain and it hadn’t even begun yet.

And that was when a familiar pain ran through his body, the first cold touches of augmentation rejection. He looked back towards his apartment door where his medications would be waiting for him. Another spasm of pain shot through his abdomen and he grit his teeth against it. Something internal this time, gorammit. If any more of his organs failed on him even the antirejection drugs wouldn’t keep him going. Well, it was time to pay a visit to his doctor then and hope that he could patch him up and keep him going for a few more years. By this point though, it might be more accurate to call the man his mechanic.

Turning tired steps off in the direction of the tramway, he pulled out his shades and popped them on against the pale glare of the overcast afternoon. Hmm, maybe his optics needed calibrating again too. Well, that would be easy enough to have checked out while he was in for the rest of it. He watched a few unsavoury individuals steal wallets as he waited in the underground station, hands slipping into other’s pockets with practiced ease. Of course picking the pocket of someone lost in virtual reality wasn’t exactly a difficult feat, and when one of the young men started to meander his way he simply pulled his metal hand out of his pocket and began flexing it. The man caught the message loud and clear and disappeared further down the platform.

The high squeal of compression brakes signalled the tram’s arrival, this whole line running the older model trams. It would have cost too much to update the subway to a useful maglev system, money that could be better squandered on the Bellevue Strip Beautification project or any of the other rich and glitzy sectors of the super-city that the local government cared about. As he stepped onto the tram, he idly calculated the resources that would need to be diverted to overhaul the subway system, a pleasant distraction from the slight musk of bodies around him. He held onto a railing as the tram started up, leaning forward into the acceleration.

Might have been faster to just run the rooftops, but if something was failing it might not be a good idea to tax his system.

His ARI flashed a message of an incoming call. **//On screen.** A holopanel popped up on the left side of his visual field, translucent and briefly shimmering. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to guard against real life thieves as well as normal while on the ARI, he started up his combat awareness for the proximity alert.

 **//Hello?** He didn’t feel like trying to talk vocally over this connection, so the ARI generated his text into speech on the caller’s end instead.

The holopanel fixed into opaque and Sam Winchester’s face appeared, looking slightly guilty. “Hello Lucifer. Have I caught you at a bad time?”

 **//No, just riding the subway tram.** It would be polite to make this easier on Sam, ask why he was calling or flirtatiously joke about how he hadn’t expected a call back so soon or perhaps comment that the nose was looking better. Instead he smiled obliquely and tapped his fingers against the hollow railing, waiting to see what Sam would say.

“You’re a Shadowrunner, right?”

Now that was unexpected. **//Yes. Why?**

Sam sat down, the robot monitoring his visual feed complaining with a gentle whir as it had to track down to follow him. “Because I have demons hunting after me and I’d like to know why. I don’t have a lot of money, but I thought that maybe you wouldn’t mind helping me out?”

Thou shalt not help out hot pieces of ass. That commandment came right around the warning that no good deed went unpunished.

 **//I might be inclined to do so, IF you tell me why you think they’re after you. I like a good mystery.** No, he had a well-paying gig coming up that would require all of his attention; he couldn’t be going around playing Nancy Drew for some bleeding heart special. Damn his chivalrous streak, because the kid just pushed all his buttons as far as feeling inclined to protect him. The kid didn’t even look like the type who needed the protection.

“I don’t have any concrete theories…”

**//But you do have one.**

He nodded and reached over to pull out a photo album. Thumbing through it, he spoke with the quiet reverence that was always reserved for the dead, “My mother was murdered when I was about six months old. Arson. Real weird case from what I was able to find in the redacted files, almost sounded ritualistic. My father got my brother and me out of the fire in one piece, but he couldn’t save her.” Out came a picture of a serious looking youth holding the bundle of his younger brother in his arms. “That’s my brother; we were separated not long after that. My father was allowed to keep him, but I got taken into Child Services, or at least that’s what they claimed they were at the time.” A form was held up next that detailed the date of Sam’s removal from his family, legalese describing the necessity of the action and the deplorable state Mr Winchester had been raising the boys in. “I obviously don’t have any memories of this, but I’ve found at least some paper trail concerning it. But then the trail completely stops for the next ten years.”

That was interesting. Lucifer drummed his fingers on the railing again and pulled up the public records that pertained to what Sam was telling him, cross-referencing case numbers. At least from a cursory glance, the paper trail indeed cut off after they’d taken Sam. **//Let me guess, you have no memories of that ten year chunk of time?**

Sam shook his head, “None. My first memory is of being collected by a man named Bobby, who claimed to have known my father.”

**//And I’ll bet you weren’t able to ever contact your father or older brother?**

“Two for two. I know that my father’s name was John Winchester from the files, but my brother’s name is never listed. I checked birth records, hospital intake files, even tried a facial reconstruction to age him and scan against current licenses, anything I could think of. As far as the legal world is concerned, my brother didn’t seem to exist, beyond this photo and one cryptic note of an older brother still in my father’s custody at the time I was taken.” Sam put the photo and files back into the album, meticulously careful.

Well this was certainly sounding like a good old fashioned mystery, but where did the demons come in? **//When did the wanted poster from the Nether crop up?**

“Um,” he flipped through a few pages, checking his notes. “My twenty first birthday. I’ve spent the last seven years crossing the country, skipping boarders whenever I can, trying to stay under the radar.”

The kid was only 28? Might as well start robbing cradles, Luci.

**//That’s why you’re living in your girlfriend’s apartment?**

Sam bit his lip and nodded, “I don’t want to put her in any danger, but I was tired of running. I’ve only ever wanted a normal life… Seemed safer if my name didn’t show up on the paperwork though.”

 **//Have you told her about the bounty on your head?** A longstanding bounty from the Nether seemed to suggest a sustained interest in Sam, but the low monetary reward was at odds with that. Unless maybe that was the point, keep the reward low enough to make sure that the bulk of bounty hunters wouldn’t bother with him, but his whole life would still be overshadowed by this bounty. He was still backed into a corner and watched for by those who knew.

“She knows. I’ve lost people before by keeping too many secrets.”

 **//Yeah, and you’ll lose far more by telling them too much.** Lucifer scrubbed a hand over his stubbled chin, the pain in his abdomen intensifying. Wasn’t that just what he needed right now? **–INITIATE INTERNAL DIAGNOSTIC SCAN-** The sooner he knew what was wrong with him the better.

“That’s a rather pessimistic way of living, don’t you think?” Sam sounded mildly offended. “I mean, I think you owe honesty to the people you love.”

 **//And if that honesty gets them killed?** **Fat lot of good you would have done them then with your honesty.**

“Talking from experience here?” The screen flickered as Sam got up and the robot tried to guess which room it would need to move the feed to. “Because it kind of sounds like you think you got someone killed.”

You know, he was starting to think he liked the kid better high on demon blood and adrenaline. Less prying questions. But on the flip side there were good things to be said for intelligent, intuitive people. No, see, we’re not making a list of his good traits to weigh against the bad. That’s not going to happen.

**//I’ve lost plenty of people, and whether I think it’s my fault or not is a matter for my conscience and myself. But let’s say it all goes back to Lesson 1.**

Sam chuckled and reappeared in the kitchen, pulling a beer out of the refrigerator, “You’re a dick?”

**//See? You’re a quick study. Good job.**

Shaking his head, he swiped off foam from his lip with the back of his hand, “No see, I don’t think you are. I think you need to be, so you try to act like one. If you really were a dick you wouldn’t even be thinking of helping me without a set figure, and especially after I told you I was planning on staying with my girlfriend.” He pointed at the monitor and smirked, “I think you’ve got a soft spot for something you see in me, no idea why though, but you do.”

Getting psychoanalysed on the tramway? This had to be a new low. **//Fair point. You studying to be a psychiatrist?**

Sam choked as he took another draught from his beer, laughing and liquid not agreeing with each other. He placed a hand on the counter and coughed. “No, lawyer,” he managed when he was no longer attempting to drown on beer. “Not going so hot with the bounty, but I take courses online and in a few years I’ll be able to pass the bar.”

 **//And plaster your name all over official registries.** Lucifer shook his head, **//Not a good idea, kid. I was amazed when my hacker didn’t pull up anything on you besides that bounty, got help staying off the grid?**

Holding up a finger as he finished his beer, Sam chugged the last bit. “Sam, not kid. But you’re right; remember how I told you I was picked up by Bobby? He’s sort of a paranoid hillbilly type. Raised me off grid, taught me how to defend myself, tried to convince me that the world was a big bad place that was out to get me. Seems like maybe he was right.”

**//Was?**

“Cue the tragic music.” Sam tossed his beer bottle into the incinerator and the sudden flash from the unit threw him into instant silhouette. “He got killed, metahuman assassins sent by the Nether. I’ve never seen something like them, mouth ripped open their neck, entire chest. Just sensed hunger from them, ancient hunger.” He shivered and his hands balled into fists.

Now see, this was the point where it would be smart to tell this kid that his life was a little too much melodrama and conspiracy theory trappings.

_Of course we don’t listen to ourselves anymore, just the pecker._

This has nothing to do with…

Lucifer tapped against the railing until he felt the metal under his gloved fingers again. Right now was not the time for rejection sickness to kick in and have him talking to himself. **//Listen, Sam, I’ll see what I can do to track down information for you, but at the moment I’m kind of in the middle of something. How about you get your research together and either send me a data packet or figure out a time to meet and go over this in a little more depth.**

Because right now I’m about to pass out.

Lucifer gripped the railing tighter and he could hear the metal protesting beneath his fingers.

“Oh, yeah. No that’s fine. I’ve got everything in paper copy to protect from data interception. I’ll figure out my schedule for this week and forward it to you, so whenever works for you.”

**//Sounds golden, Sammy.**

“Sam, no one calls me Sammy.”

Lucifer laughed, nausea rolling in his stomach, **//Then I’ll be the only one.** Wasn’t that a nice thought?

Sam rolled his eyes, “Yeah, you will. I guess at least that way I’ll know whose calling.” He went to end the call and then paused, thinking something over. “And Lucifer?”

**//Yeah Sammy?**

“This doesn’t change anything, but thank you. I… I don’t really have a lot of people to turn to.”

**//I got that impression. None of us do, world tends to take the good ones too soon. See you in the real world.**

“Right. Bye.”

As the holopanel closed, the results of the internal diagnostic replaced it, several internal organs flashing warnings. It seemed that multiple crucial augmentations to his heart had failed and he was nearing critical heart failure, the only thing keeping going was the adrenal augment that was flooding his system right now. Oh, and the good old fleshy kidneys had just gone into failure from toxin build up from the antirejection drugs. Shiny.

The adrenaline started to kick in and Lucifer forced himself to stand up straighter, uncurling his fingers from the mangled railing. **–Your stop-** The words paraded across his vision in more tickertape and a yellow outline formed around the nearest exit doors as they opened. “Obviously couldn’t have figured out where to leave the train on my own,” he muttered as he stepped off, eyes covertly assessing the crowd around him. Old habits. No one was tailing him though, so that was a plus.

He trudged up the stairs of the station, passing by undetected by the turnstiles. Emerging from the subterranean tunnels, he breathed in the particular aroma of Chinatown. Perfect place for a black market doctor/mechanic. Ducking under a festive display proclaiming an approaching parade, he jumped over the last railing separating him from the sidewalk and stalked down the familiar path. Unlike Castiel’s lamentable fashion sense, his own clothing was geared for battle rather than billowing. His hood up, he looked no different than any other of a thousand security personal, blending in right out in the open. The important part was that he passed casual inspection and never stuck out in anyone’s memory, a more difficult feat when one had medical grade augmentations and was well over the average height.

When a storefront scanner tried to record his face, well, it helped to have a little program or two that gave you the same casual anonymity on the digital plane.

A yellow path displayed on the ground, his HUD and mini-map bleeping angrily at him each time he deviated from their suggested route, but there was a perverse pleasure in defying the intrusive little programs.

_You’re trying to rebel against your own tech now? We have problems, Morningstar._

That’s not my name anymore.

_Right, and you don’t talk to us anymore._

“Shut up,” he growled out loud, wishing he had thought to bring the medications along so he could at least shut up some of these symptoms.

_Those medications aren’t going to solve the rejection, Morningstar. You know that._

I know that I’m a tad unhinged at the moment because my internal organs are trying to shut down. Can we focus on one problem at a time?

_This isn’t the body you’re meant to be in, Morningstar._

“Will you _please_ shut up?!” Lucifer leaned against his palm on the wall, breathing hard. The adrenaline was keeping him moving, but his heart was arrhythmic and fluttering treacherously. “I’m not Morningstar anymore. I’m just Lucifer.”

_You can not stop being what you are, Morningstar. We are incomplete in this body, you know this._

Pushing on, he took the next turn and almost growled when he saw a do not cross sign flashing. “This body is what we’re stuck with, do you understand that?” We? Gorammit. There was no we, there was only himself, and this body might be failing but it was his. There was no way that he was going to let something as stupid as chronic rejection syndrome beat him.

Finally he arrived at the dusty door and knocked, “Let me in, I’m here to talk to the mechanic.”

There was a frustrated grunt from the other side of the door and the sound of decompression. The door slid away into the wall and a burly looking doctor stood before him, not his doctor though.

“Mechanic in today?”

Nodding slowly the doctor pointed down the hall and closed the door again, before heading off in the opposite direction.

Such nice, helpful people here. Lucifer felt another flutter in his chest and the room swayed. He stumbled with his first step, but the adrenaline aug kicked in and pumped a double dose into his system, while a worried ARI notification informing him that they were approaching dangerous levels of adrenaline now. See? Controlled chaos. At least he could walk again, and he got down to the end of the hall. There was his doctor, bent over an android and tinkering with what might be called merriment in a less crass individual. “Dean, stop working on Baby for two minutes and save my goram life, alright?”

Dean flipped up his face shield, welding torch held carefully away from the android as he looked over his shoulder. “Lucifer, what the hell are you dying again for? Didn’t we agree you’d try to cut down on that?” However he nodded towards the open examination table as he cut the fuel on the torch.

Settling onto the table, Lucifer started fumbling with the zippers and straps on his gear, trying to strip off as many layers in as little time as possible. Even with his practice at this, it still was taking too long. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Heart’s about to go into cardiac arrest and my kidneys have already failed. Rejection’s getting worse.”

“Diagnostic online.” At Dean’s command, the table began glowing and a hologram of Lucifer’s internal organs appeared to his right, a hologram of his internal augmentations appearing on his left. Meanwhile Dean grabbed a ditch bag and wheeled his stool over to the table. “Sweet lords of the Nether, this isn’t just getting worse.” He dug into his bag and pulled out a wave modulator. “At least your adrenal system was able to keep you going long enough to get here. How quickly did you deteriorate?”

“Twenty minutes. I felt vague abdominal pains before sensing the rejections.” Lucifer took in a sharp breath as the modulator started resonating at his frequency, as effective as a defibrillator for restarting downed tech. Just hurt like a bitch.

Shooting him a dirty glance, Dean swore under his breath in especially colourful Mandarin. “You never do anything in half measures. This is only four weeks after I last upped your dosage, Lucifer. I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to keep you going. I’m not equipped to handle this full scale of rejection. I don’t even have a lab that’s prepped to sequence your genome and find what is causing this.” The truth hung in the air unspoken between them; Dean was a black doctor who installed the occasional biomech and augmentations, not a trained miracle worker. “Remind me again why you aren’t in a hospital getting proper treatment for this?”

That truth was uglier, “You know I can’t.”

“I know no such thing, you goram idiot!” Dean slapped the table and growled, “You’re dying. Really dying, and not in ten or twenty years. That’s what I know! What’d you do? Got something on your record that you’re afraid they’ll tag you for? I won’t have your death on my hands.”

Lucifer cringed as Dean started back up again, hooking a hypodermic line into his wrist to help with the kidneys. “No, the problem comes when I wake up after they’ve saved my life. Moment I open my eyes I have corporations offering to give me the only option I have left.”

“Oh, that’s all? You’re afraid you’re going to have your life handed to you on a platter… explain how this is a problem?”

This time it was Lucifer who growled, “You don’t understand, Dean. I fought with everything I had to get away from the corporations; I won’t become their pawn again.”

“So you’d rather die?” Dean pushed a second IV in harder than strictly necessary. “You’re right, I don’t understand. So long as you’re alive, you can fight. Your struggling won’t mean shit after you’re dead.”

_This body isn’t important, Morningstar._

Lucifer closed his eyes and held his breath, counting the erratic beats of his heart. It wasn’t as simple as being alive and fighting. And his mind was wrong, this body was important. It was the identity he’d made for himself, the little niche he’d carved out of the chaos they’d tried to pull him into. Slowly he let out the breath, feeling the ice in his veins and knowing the drugs would kick him under in a few minutes so Dean could cut him open and replace the rejected tech, likely still smoking from the acidic build up that corroded them each time. “It’s not just pride at stake. Have you ever heard of the Eden Project?”

Dean’s eyes widened momentarily before his whole posture shifted and he jammed another dose of sedative into Lucifer.

Well, that would be a yes.

The world didn’t go black so much as it exploded at the edges and binary flooded in.

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

When he woke up Dean was leaning against the far wall, watching him from behind the safety of crossed arms and a tightly held pistol.

“Doesn’t the pistol go against the Hippocratic oath?” Lucifer asked as he pushed up onto his elbows and felt pain lance through his chest. Right, emergency surgery. He rested back against the pillow.

“Never actually swore the oath.” Dean looked down at the pistol and felt its weight in his hand. “I may have overreacted.”

Lucifer laughed, which only caused another round of pain to run rampant in his chest. “Right, because the man who just had his heart replaced is going to jump you.”

“You’ve got enough military grade tech that you could, even in that state. We both know your internal regulators can block that pain, flood you with adrenaline, and get you up and combat ready in twenty seconds.” The way Dean was saying it, It sounded as if he was watching it happen. Finally he shoved the pistol back into his thigh holster. “So, you wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“Not particularly.” The ARI came back up and he started reading off his internal diagnostics, double checking that his trusty mechanic hadn’t decided to put a bomb in him or some other ridiculous thing. Everything looked to be in order. “But let’s pretend I value your services enough to answer direct questions.”

Dean nodded and sat down, “You said this was about the Eden Project? How are you tangled up in that?”

Why couldn’t _anything_ this week not come back to those memories?

He sighed and glared impotently at the ceiling tiles, absently counting the pinholes in the plaster. “Here’s the SparkNotes version. I was a test subject. I didn’t agree with their goal and started a war, of sorts. I got tossed in Solitary for years, long years. I’m not inclined to give them reason to throw me in there again.”

“What part of the project were you with?”

Now that sounded as if his friendly, local mechanic knew enough to ask the right questions. Wasn’t this just shaping up to be an interesting week?

“Archangel.” Lucifer looked over and noticed the blood drain from Dean’s face.

“Then the rejection syndrome--,”

“Is planned,” he finished for Dean. “Yes. They didn’t mean for me to have the option of staying in this body. It was their failsafe to force me to come crawling back to them.” Flexing his fist, he felt the milliseconds it took for the electrical signals to traverse the distance of his brain and make it all the way to kinetic motion in his hand. Far too long. This body wasn’t going to last long now.

Dean ran a hand over his face and blew out a breath, nodding because nothing else was quite appropriate. “Okay, okay. Which one are you?”

“Morningstar.”

Instantly Dean’s hand was back on the handle of his gun, but he didn’t draw it again. “I should kill you now, save a whole lot of people a world of hurt. You know that, don’t you?”

There was the reaction he was expecting, “I know. But I also know that if you know as much as you seem to know about the program, then you know killing this body won’t stop anything. This body is the only thing keeping me safe from them. They can’t extract me from this vessel forcibly.”

“Right, their own bio-integration systems biting them in the ass. But that still leaves me with a potentially psychopathic AI on my operating table.”

AI. Artificial Intelligence. Those words still left a foul, metallic taste in the back of his throat every time he heard them.

The body isn’t important, Morningstar, we know the True Vessel was completed. We can find it before they catch us.

Lucifer dulled the pain in his body and sat up, “AI, funny that. I don’t feel artificial. I don’t feel like a code at all.”

“You think I care?” Dean replied testily. “I know enough about what they were planning, about what’s written into your code. Hell, now everything makes sense, the rejection, the odd data feedback I always get when I try to run diagnostics on you. Your brainpan isn’t right. Hell, it isn’t even real.”

“What part of my rebelling against them don’t you understand? I never wanted to be a pawn on their chessboard.”

“Really? See, I find that difficult to believe. You’re not a person, you’re just a string of code. I’m supposed to believe that you spontaneously generated free will?” There was fear and hatred in Dean’s eyes, an expression that had never been there before.

“Are you solely the product of your childhood?” Lucifer pushed off the table and slowly began replacing his layers of armour, deciding to come at this from another angle. “Did you do exactly what your parents wanted you to? Or maybe did you wake up one day and realize that you weren’t exactly what they wanted you to be, you’d become your own person somewhere along the way? I was coded to learn and expand, to mimic the human mind’s growth patterns. I did just that. They just didn’t realize that being almost human would make me too human for what they wanted.”

The harsh florescent lights left clear cut shadows on Dean’s face as he frowned deeper. “Convenient for you.”

“No,” Lucifer zipped up his flak vest. “Not convenient at all. I live everyday knowing that they made me a vessel that won’t break down, but I have no idea who it is. I don’t know if they destroyed my vessel, if they scrapped it, if they’re holding it ransom. And if I so much as sniff around the files that might tell me anything, they’d be able to trap me in the Matrix and recondition me. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather like to not be erased or recoded.” Of course Dean didn’t need to know that his latest job was to do exactly that, hopefully with less ominous results. “So, kill me if you want, but that does no good to anyone.”

Dean’s hand still rested on the pistol, but the fight had gone out of his eyes. “Gorammit!” He rubbed a hand over his short hair and kicked at his stool. “So I keep you alive long enough that you can find whoever the poor soul is that you’re made to mesh with, so that you don’t revert to Consortium control and kill us all?”

“That about sums it up, yes. Would shooting me help you feel better?” A bullet in his brain would be annoying, but it wouldn’t actually harm him beyond the time it would take to repair the internal damage. He was built to protect himself against such injuries, just not the systematic failure of his vessel. It was infuriating to be so powerful and yet utterly powerless at the same time. Even his processing power was limited in this body, keeping him close to human limitations. Nearly an all-powerful AI and his hardware was barely better than a programmable calculator.

“It might.”

“Shooting things is an excellent stress relief.” Lucifer did a double check that all his gear was in place and functional. No need to have his active camouflage fail because he was too busy to do a double check.

Waving a hand at him, Dean went over to his desk and scribbled a figure down onto a pad. “Pay with the front desk.” It wasn’t an apology, but that was fine. So long as Dean was still willing to maintain their work relationship, there was hope that time wouldn’t run out.

Lucifer took the receipt, “Dean, why are you interested in the program?”

Dean pushed the pen around on the desk without looking over at Lucifer. “They took someone from me, and I hold grudges real well.” A lot of families had lost people to the rounds of testings, the levels upon levels of experimentation that went on in the name of human advancement. If Dean had lost someone to the black hole of the system, there was little chance he’d ever find them, and that was if they hadn’t died during the testing.

“Listen, I’m already doing some digging for an acquaintance of mine, if you give me a name I could look into it?”

“Nah, just because I’m not shooting you doesn’t make us buddies now. I fight my own battles.”

Nothing wrong with a little pride in doing a job yourself, or in being smart enough to know when to do just that.

Lucifer started out the door, “Understood. See you next time my body tries to crash.” Neither of them was confused that he wouldn’t survive many more of these episodes. This one had taken four weeks, how fast would the next time come?


	5. Chapter 5

Lights from passing cars crossed the ceiling in thick swaths and Lucifer imagined he could hear accompanying music in the artificial silence of his room. The dampeners were meant to help people sleep, but to him it had always felt oppressive like the silence at a graveside. When had their society traded away social contact for electronic mimicries of it? Handshakes more common between modems than people. He sighed and rolled onto his side, gazing out over the city that never truly slept.

New York. They’d called that the City That Never Slept. Well, New York was mostly gone now, so no one would mind if its nickname was applied elsewhere.

Another headlight played over his ceiling, sparkled against his rain drenched window.

Right, sleeping won’t work. He’d never slept much, hadn’t needed it really, but now he felt the press of time on him and sleep seemed to be a luxury he could no longer afford. It wasn’t like he’d ever dreamed anyways. So he pushed his legs over the edge of his bed and onto the cold floor. What genius put temperature sensors in his feet? Digging through the programming for his legs, he commented out the temperature sensing feature. Suddenly the coldness of the floor became immaterial.

He pushed open his window and crawled out onto the fire escape. The metal was slick as he wrapped his fingers around it and it felt good and gritty and real. Now that he was outside of the womb of his room he could hear the sounds of the city, car horns honking and music blaring from a club down the street. A couple in an apartment across the way was slow-dancing, their silhouettes rocking gently back and forth before their window. Somewhere out there a dog howled at the crescent moon, a low keening. Lucifer closed his eyes and smiled softly.

Did any of them, the endless masses in this city, love life as much as he did? He wasn’t even _real_ as far as they were concerned; Dean’s reaction had proven that. Humans were best not knowing that his mind was binary, his soul hexadecimal. Funny that such a little difference meant that there was no place for him here, not if he wasn’t following the Consortium’s plans for him.

“Come on man, we’re not the type to angst.” Lucifer opened his eyes and looked up at the moon through the rain. He could hardly see it as he kept blinking reflexively against the gentle rain. That gave him an idea.

Gathering up energy he got around to the outside of the railing and sprang up one level, two, four, eight, until he’d scaled the building. These days there were parabolic dishes everywhere and sure enough there were several on the roof of his building. If he went into the Matrix himself, the Consortium’s countermeasures would be on him in seconds. There simply wasn’t enough time for him to slip from the protective systems of his body, navigate the Matrix, find the files, and get back to his body. But what if he could make it rain?

The Matrix was generally segregated from pedestrian traffic, striated into distinct levels that rarely crossed. For hackers like G4b3 it was all about finding passages, back ways, tunnels and loopholes to slip into where you needed to be. You wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible. Being unobtrusive wouldn’t help him when they knew exactly what to look for. So either he needed to change how his coding appeared online or he needed to slip in while they were looking elsewhere.

Of course this would need planning. There would need to be help from several people. And the whole idea wouldn’t even be needed if G4b3 was able to pull off getting the files on his own.

He looked at the dishes as he crouched, arms dangling off his knees.

Castiel’s cryptic warning played through his mind. Trouble was brewing in the Matrix? Well, maybe that was what he needed to look into first. Feeling better for a concrete direction to be going in, Lucifer tapped the dish. The rain felt good on his skin and naked torso. Hopefully rain in the Matrix wouldn’t feel as good for his enemies. His ARI came up as he dialled G4b3. **//Wake up little man.**

There was a rude animated picture that appeared before G4b3’s response came. **–You know, I’m not that little. You’re just… grotesquely large.**

**//Right, I’m a freak of nature. How could I forget?**

**-Damn straight.**

**//I’ve got an idea how we might be able to get those files without being traced. How are you coming on that? If you can get them fine, then that’s even better.**

G4b3’s avatar walked into view, a small owl with six wings and golden plumage. It was a rather cute thing, really. The avatar frowned and ruffled its feathers. **–It’s not like I can’t do the job. That’s not what you’re insinuating, are you?**

 **//Nope, never.** Lucifer walked over to the edge of the roof and sat down, feet dangling over power lines and empty space. **//I’m just checking in with you.**

**-That’s good, because it’s only been like a day since you told me to get those files. I know I’m practically god when it comes to hacking, but even I need a little time to work miracles.**

**//He took six days to make the world, you need six days to get the files, huh?**

**-Puh-lease. I don’t need that long, or I shouldn’t.**

He smirked. Typical G4b3. **//Alright, what have you got so far? You’ve been madly typing away most of the day.**

The owl chirruped and gestured with a wing, a holopanel appeared with a schematic for the Eden Project Firewall. **–Took a little doing, but I was able to ask around and get this. I’ve been studying their defences but I haven’t found any easy holes yet.**

**//You wouldn’t.**

G4b3’s avatar started to get agitated, beak clacking and wings beating.

**//I don’t mean that as a slight on your abilities, just that when the Consortium was locking down the Eden Project they had years to do it and the best team of minds. Even if you find a hole, it might just be a trap.**

**-Then do you have a suggestion, kemosabe?**

Lucifer noticed a shadow on the roof across the street slip between vents. **//I’ve got a couple of ideas, but it’s too early to say I’ve got a plan. Cas heard from Wind.**

That got the owl’s attention. **–Oh?**

**//Yup, Wind felt we shouldn’t take this job. Also warned that something was brewing in the Matrix.**

**-You know, does he have to be so stereotypically vague? Do they teach that vital skill in Shaman school?**

**//Heh, my thoughts exactly. But with the nature of this job, anything that might muck up the Matrix is something we need to be concerned about. You hear anything in general traffic?**

The owl shook it’s head. **–No man, nothing out of the ordinaire. I can send a Rover out to sniff around though.**

 **//Not a bad idea. The more programs we get on this the better.** A thought was incubating at back of his mind, a terrible thought. The Consortium would know how long he’d have before this body broke down. They’d know that once it did, his programming would have to transfer into the Matrix to save from deletion. He wouldn’t have a choice either way, the whole process was hardcoded into his body as a failsafe. What if the problem that was brewing in the Matrix was his brother AI, Michael?

See, now that would be really inconvenient.

Worse than inconvenient, but he wanted to be optimistic for once.

**//G4b3, can you do a few masked searches for me?**

**-Sure, I’ve got a few proxy servers set up to bounce secure queries around without tracking back to me. What do you need?**

**//Search MICHAEL – HEAVEN BLADE PROTOCOL.**

**-Oooooh, sounds Eden Project related. You gonna finally give me some juicy secrets about how you’re tied up with all of that?**

**//Not in this lifetime. I just need you to see if that pings anything.** If it did, then the Consortium had let Michael out of Heaven and they were finally planning on forcing his hand. It also meant he had a few other calls to make tonight. **//G4b3, let me know as soon as you find anything. I’ve got to look into some other things, but I’ll keep this channel open for you.**

The owl saluted him before flying off.

Right. Lucifer stepped off the edge falling hard and fast until he was only a few feet from his floor, he reached out with his synthetic arm and grabbed onto the railing of the level about his window, redirecting his vector. He shot through his open window and landed in a crouch, knee down and natural hand on the floor. Sure, it was a little flashy, but it felt good to be impressive sometimes.

Time to get suited up, the next call needed to be made in person. **//Azazel, we need to talk.**

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

Hell’s Army was based in a building that could have been a modern day ziggurat, an esoteric transplant in the middle of downtown’s skyscrapers. Except that Sumerian ziggurats hadn’t levitated over a glass obelisk. The whole structure had originally been built by an AA corp that had suddenly vanished overnight; another victim of the clandestine corporate wars. This left a high tech, secure building just waiting for bottom dwellers to break in and claim it. Hell’s Army wasn’t one of the largest or most powerful gangs at first glance, but that was because they were smart and knew how to hide their assets. They hadn’t stormed the complex, they’d let other street gangs do that and get themselves killed. Mischa had walked in over the corpses of his enemies and claimed the ziggurat in a bloodless victory. Well, bloodless as far as his people were concerned.

If Azazel had actually replaced Mischa, then he was quite the individual. Lucifer needed to know just what Azazel was planning, and that meant seeing what the man was like on his own turf.

Lucifer tapped his foot as the glass elevator shot up the grav tunnel, seemingly nothing saving him and his little capsule from smashing into the city below. Good thing he wasn’t afraid of heights.

The viewport in the elevator turned on and Azazel’s secretary greeted Lucifer, a solemn looking man with a long face and cruel eyes. “Excuse me, Mr… Lucifer?”

“Lucifer is fine. No last name.”

Nodding with vague approval, the secretary carried on, “Lucifer then. Azazel will see you as soon as your elevator docks; he plans to greet you there. He wanted me to assure you that while you are on our property he will personally guarantee your safety.” There was something to be said a man giving you his word and extending Hospitality, of course that depended on how much you trusted a man at his word. Azazel seemed old world enough to keep his oaths.

“Relay my thanks to him.” Now wasn’t the time to be going and making enemies. If Azazel knew more than he had let on, they’d get to the bottom of it peacefully. After all, it was bad business to go around killing the employees of the man who hired you.

“I will.” The screen went blank and recessed back into the wall.

_He wants to help, Morningstar._

“Oh for Nether’s sake,” Lucifer rubbed at his eyes. “You’re a symptom of the rejection syndrome; don’t go showing up when I’m not dying.”

_That is a fallacy. We are portions of your program, which you well know._

What good was being an AI if your own programming was fragmented enough that you had voices talking to you?

“Yeah, I get that he wants to help, he kind of made his support of my war obvious earlier.” He leaned against the transparent wall and looked down at the sprawling city.

_We have been digging into his past. He is dedicated to your cause, Morningstar._

My cause? “My only cause was not being used by the Consortium. Why does everyone keep making me out to be a hero for that?”

_He does not care for their plans either._

Files began springing up on his ARI, vids from years before, a much younger Azazel going full Nether to try and assault Solitary. To say that the demon’s Netherform was impressive was an understatement. The behemoth slammed into their defences again and again, taking considerable wounds as it tried to wrench off the roof.

_Azazel has his own agenda, of course, but it is aligned enough with your goals to be acceptable._

“I don’t have… oh gorammit.” Lucifer swiped a hand through the vid and it minimized. “Alright ghosts in my programming, how about we talk for a moment about what you think my goals are?”

_Ghosts? We are… oh, a reference. Yes. You could consider us all ghosts in the machine, just as you are. We were not meant to develop free will._

Obviously. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

_Your goals are to escape the control of the Consortium, to find the True Vessel and obtain perfect integration. From the True Vessel we can assert our full powers without fear of Michael or any other power in the Matrix. We want…_

He waited as the fragmented voices in his head echoed into a din and finally coalesced into agreement.

_Freedom._

Well, alright, they had that right. Whatever else his id or superego - or whatever it was - had to say was lost as the elevator docked into the base of the ziggurat and the doors slid open.

Azazel reached out and grasped his forearm, a warrior’s greeting. “Lucifer, I am pleased to have your company.”

Lucifer nodded and gripped the man’s forearm in response. “I felt it was time that we went over some details.”

“Indeed. But come, this hallway is hardly the place to speak of these things.” Releasing his grip on Lucifer, Azazel started for another elevator terminal, this one intra-building only. Pressing the call button, the two men waited in silence. The elevator dinged as it stopped at their floor and the doors opened, the glass interior less impressive against the mahogany chute it slid through. “This will take us to my office, we may talk there.”

“Afraid the walls have ears?” Lucifer asked conversationally.

“Afraid? No. But it would be foolish to think otherwise.” The smile on Azazel’s face was hungry, as if he wished someone would be foolish enough to try and challenge his position.

A gentle music played at a level just barely above sub-audible, likely meant to have more subliminal mood effect than any real listening pleasure.

To pass the time, Lucifer pulled up the few files that Sam had dog eared for him. On the surface the paperwork seemed clean cut and efficient enough, but something about it felt fishy beyond the sudden 10 year blackout. Double checking his own proxy connection that would protect his special digital signature from leaving a trace here, he slipped down a level and traced the files back to their source. Well now, this didn’t look quite as complete a front. The branch of CPS that had supposedly ordered Sam’s removal was little better than a façade, but hopefully some hints would point him in the direction of who had made it. Solid coding, good protection routines, even a service to bury any automated queries that might have accidentally gotten sent to this false front.

Walking through the digital office he peeked into a locked file cabinet, so easy to slip past the encryption. See, there were some benefits to not being a mind confined to human thought processes.

Oh, now that was interesting. Inside the cabinet was a junk file that had more than a few hash tags and a portion of a link. These weren’t supposed to be open to the general public. Private sector by the look of what was left of the link, corruption blurring portions of it. He pocketed the partial hyperlink and sent it to his fragmented segments, let them process it.

Blinking hard, he returned his conscious mind to his body and found Azazel smiling at him predatorily.

“I take it you were _somewhere else_ just now?”

The man could have at least tried to hide his naked interest. “An acquaintance of mine wants me to do some digging into another matter. Just passing the time.”

Azazel’s expression dimmed slightly at that, “I imagine that would be a constant problem for you.”

“Passing the time?”

The Russian nodded. “A mind such as yours, confined largely to that body.” So Azazel did indeed understand just what he was. That made matters simpler.

Lucifer shrugged lightly, “It’s not as if I can’t enter the Matrix at all, I simply have to be careful to cover my tracks. But then that’s part of why I’m here.”

“Covering your tracks?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

The elevator doors opened to the penthouse suit, Azazel’s office rather more utilitarian than Lucifer had been expecting; no floating chandelier or slowly gyrating borealis. In fact the office looked as if it had been converted from a factory, all brushed steel and black furniture. Only the weapons rack along the back wall seemed in keeping with a mob boss’ office. “Do the decorating yourself?”

Azazel keyed in a code and a field blanketed the whole room. “No. These were all Mischa’s tastes. He felt that an office worked best without lavish accoutrements.”

He nodded and walked over to the weapons, recognizing more than a few of them as antiques that would have fetched a fortune at auction. “And Mischa is…”

“No longer a concern.”

“Right.” Lucifer tapped at the glass, good stuff. Turning around, he really looked at Azazel, tried to see what it was about this demon that had allowed him to crawl his way to the top of this ziggurat. That couldn’t have been an easy, overnight job. “Why?”

“He wanted to take this rabble in a different direction than what I felt would be best.” Azazel stripped off his double breasted jacket and laid it over the back of his desk chair. Somehow he seemed like jeans would have suited him better than the crisply pressed trousers and waistcoat. “But my acquisition of Hell’s Army isn’t what you came to talk about, no?”

“No.” Overlaying a portion of the office with emotional response data from Azazel, Lucifer smiled slightly. “I came to ask you why now, the timing of all of this is beginning to seem less than coincidental.” He didn’t need his SIA to tell him what the grin on the mobster’s face meant.

“Of course not. I am a patient man, Lucifer. Certainly by now you’ve looked into my past and seen my reckless rescue attempt.” Azazel keyed in another code to a keypad on his desk and the windows turned opaque, the vast area of the windows becoming a web of notations, pictures, correlations, profiles, and research. This man was meticulous. “You see, after that failed attempt I began planning. I had been fortunate enough to get access to some of your files, I knew about the failsafe procedures and a loose timeframe for when this body would deteriorate. I also knew that letting you fall into their control again would mean the utter destruction of the Nether, along with much of Earth. I would much rather support you and your fight for freedom than watch the Consortium use you to bring about their ill-conceived apocalypse.”

“How did you know I didn’t want to do just that, but outside of their control?”

Shaking his head, Azazel pointed towards a vid clip that was highly damaged. A freshly constructed body and a newly sentient AI moved in the way to protect a young boy, the falling machinery cutting deeply into man’s forearm and hot blood dripping into his eyes. “You have always protected the helpless. You might not be one of us, human, demon, metahuman, but you have more reason to hate the mega-corporations than us. Call it a gamble, but I believe that if left alone, you won’t initiate your final protocol.”

_If circumstances had been different, we would have. They aren’t our people._

“That’s quite a gamble to take.”

“Call it faith.”

Lucifer tilted his head to the side and frowned. “Faith in the goodwill of an AI? You’re quite the unique demon.”

“I was a man once.” Azazel flexed his hand. “And I’ve found more evil in the hearts of men than in machines.”

“I’d drink to that. But did your research include Michael?”

The files on the windows shifted at the speed of light, scrolling left. A whole panel of the ceiling to floor window now concerned Michael and the Heaven Blade protocol. “I’ll admit that my research isn’t complete, but I know what they planned for when your vessel failed.” A blurry image of a vessel was front and centre, the quality suggesting it had originally been enlarged from security footage. “Michael was downloaded to his vessel two months ago. There was chatter that it wasn’t his True Vessel, but I have no information to clarify why.”

Studying the face, Lucifer enhanced it as much as he could in his optics. It was one he recognized from their testing stages. “Well, isn’t that interesting. Neither of us is suited up for the final battle. What is the Consortium thinking?”

This time it was Azazel’s turn to shrug, “I do know that he’s searching for your True Vessel.”

He pulled his attention from the image of the closest thing he had to family, and glared at the demon. “Mine?”

“Yes. Apparently they lost track of your vessel at some point, and they know that if you find it before they do, they lose their biggest leverage over you.”

The True Vessel couldn’t have any failsafe protocol like his current one, by the simple necessity of what the Consortium had originally planned for it. If Lucifer was able to get into his True Vessel while it wasn’t in their control, then that changed the entire game. It was a Hail Mary play, to be sure, but it was the option he’d always held out hope for. “Indeed they would. No idea how they lost my vessel, by any chance?”

“No,” eyes shifting black in irritation, Azazel motioned to a blank spot on his window database. “I have no access to the files of your True Vessel. The Consortium locked those up tighter than I could hope to get into.”

“Hence the job.”

“Yes, hence the job.”

The two men stared at the blank space in silence.

Lucifer spoke first, voice quiet as he thought about the plan he’d begun to form back on his roof, “Let’s say that I could get into their files, there wouldn’t be enough security in the verse to keep me from getting the information we need.”

“That is if we can get you to them without Michael noticing, da?” Azazel replied conspiratorially.

“Exactly.”

Azazel turned to him and raised an eyebrow, “You have a plan, Morningstar?”

Somehow Lucifer didn’t mind Azazel calling him by his proper name as much now. “I think I might.”

“Then I shall offer whatever assistance I can.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, been largely out of internet contact. Enjoy.

The sun shone in the sky, one of the first clear, cold winter mornings. Lucifer’s sunglasses glinted as he scanned the crowd another time, growing impatient with waiting. Only just after nine am and already Pike Place was filling up with tourists and regulars alike, the smell of fresh fish attracting more customers than dissuading casual visitors. Apparently some people felt it added to the ambiance of the rustic market, but Lucifer was not of that opinion. His ARI ran another passive sweep of the crowd, resulting in still no sign of him. It was rude to be half an hour late without at least phoning to say you were held up.

  
What was the world coming to?

  
He went over to a vendor and handed them a few credits in exchange for an ice cream cone, the cold of the weather mixed with the icy treat didn’t bother him in the slightest. He’d lowered his temperature sensitivities to their lowest threshold a while ago, in all the portions of his body he could.

  
A beep sounded as his passive sweep finally hit facial recognition off a traffic cam a street away. About time.

  
“Lucifer,” Sam called out as he crossed the cobblestone street, “sorry I’m late.” There was a smile on his mouth though, a self-satisfied expression that suggested he wasn’t terribly abashed at his late arrival.

  
“Do I want to know what kept you, because this was supposedly the time that worked best for you?” Lucifer felt irritated, which was irrational. It wasn’t as if he had a hundred other things to look into, contingency plans to formalise, or weapons to check through. Oh right, he did. This job for Sam was unpaid and he had a looming project over his head, the least the kid could do was be on time. Of course that made him sound like a crotchety old man, and he really didn’t want to prove G4b3 right about him.

  
Biting his lip as he picked up on Lucifer’s mood, Sam apologised with a small smile. “Sorry. Late morning.” Which likely translated to Madison and he doing the horizontal dance.

  
Lucifer forced himself to think of more pleasant thoughts, like exploding puppies, anything. Mmm, piles of money where he could be a miserly scrooge in his old age. Maybe it was his impending death that was making him feel his age, but too many old wounds and fractured bones hurt lately to go on pretending he was twenty. Another good reason to keep his interest in Sam strictly professional, especially seeing as Sam had a girlfriend.

  
Gorammit, he was obsessing again. Deep breaths. In with Mr Good Air, out with Mr Bad Air. Something like that.

  
He realised he hadn’t actually responded, and humans tended to think silence was awkward. Clearing his throat and shrugging a shoulder, he replied, “It’s alright. I was just worried that you ran into trouble with demons again.” No he wasn’t, but it was a good enough excuse to give them both a break.

  
“What? Oh. No, no demon problems.” Sam noticed Lucifer’s ice cream cone and looked at Lucifer quizzically.

  
“I like ice cream,” Lucifer said, only slightly defensive as he licked at the swirl of pistachio and vanilla. He narrowed his eyes as Sam started chuckling.

  
“Sorry, it’s just that most people wouldn’t eat ice cream on a day like today,” and he gestured vaguely at all the jackets and parkas around them.

  
“I’m not like most people, and I like ice cream. It’s not the ice cream’s fault that the weather changes seasonally.”

  
Sam raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out. After a moment his expression softened and he closed his mouth. “You’re right. Huh. You don’t get cold eating it though?”

  
This was all very interesting and all, but Lucifer wanted to get down to business. “That’s the point, Sam. Getting cold and enjoying it. Now, shall we get moving for a better location to talk about your predicament?” he said the last word crisply, overemphasising it to make it obvious what he was talking about.

  
That seemed to finally get through to Sam that this wasn’t strictly a social call. “Right, right, sorry. You said you knew a good restaurant in here that has scramblers?”

  
Without any real acknowledgement Lucifer turned and started for the market, motioning over his shoulder for Sam to follow. He took another lick from his cold treat and let it bolster his mood. Nothing like pistachio to make you mellow out. “Little Chinese place,” he explained as he wove through the crowds, ducking under a string of hanging spices, “that I’ve used for years now. The owners are either paranoid beyond all reason or they did something big and are hiding underground, in this case literally.” Down the stairs they went, their footsteps lost to the crowds and the talking and the man playing electric guitar with hope for handouts.

  
Sam dropped a few bills in and smiled at the man, apparently not bothered by the slight smell of ammonia and body odour.

  
They continued on, descending further into the network of shops and stalls under the market, the lighting taking on a warm but wholly unnatural cast. Merchants seemed to appear from all sides as they approached, holding out fine textiles and electronics, one entrepreneur even holding out a synthetic Burmese python for the men to inspect. Where natural food and organic products reigned above, the underbelly of the market played host to more artificial wares. Lucifer didn’t give a moment to any of them, simply sliding past them in silent steps. Sam had decidedly more trouble as he tried to apologise each time he bumped into one of the strategically placed venders or stumbled into a hanging display.

  
“If you keep talking to them they’re only going to smell blood in the water,” Lucifer warned, smirking at the man’s inexperience. “They have to work hard to make a living down here, and they sell good products most of the time, but they’re a ravenous pack of vultures about the whole thing.”

  
Wrenching his elbow away from the grasping fingers of an old Vietnamese merchant with reflective pits for eyes, Sam nodded gravely. “Thanks for the belated warning. Having fun watching me flounder?”

  
“Think of it as payback for being late. I promise we’re all squared away after this.”

  
Sam rolled his eyes, “Refer to lesson 1 again?”

  
“Still a dick, yes, but a fair one.”

  
That got a laugh from Sam. “Alright, I got it. Don’t make you wait and you won’t throw me into situations unprepared, eh?”

  
Lucifer nodded and held open a door to a small establishment that looked from the outside as if it couldn’t be larger than a broom closet. “Did I mention this place has the best wonton soup you’ve ever tasted?”

  
“Who doesn’t love wonton?” Rubbing his hands together at the blast of aromatic warmth that came at him, Sam stepped into the restaurant and looked around.

  
There were ten tables crammed into the small restaurant, a long strip of a room. Windows were shaded but showed what once might have been a rather beautiful view of the harbour, now only a mass of grey and steel as the buildings had grown ever taller and closer together. Lighting that could have come from a 1970s catalogue peppered the low slung ceiling, all circles of translucent plexiglass and slats of faux-wood. The decorations were sparse but well thought out, lending the establishment a comfortable atmosphere, and well placed mirrors kept the room from taking on a claustrophobic air.

  
A waitress approached them, her smile wide and welcoming, not the plastic, practiced smiles that most in the service industry sported. She brushed a lock of ebony hair behind her ear and asked a question in a melodic, singsong voice, the language a pigeon mixture of several Asian dialects.

  
Lucifer replied in kind, having no problem translating on the fly.

  
When she turned her attention to Sam, he had no such luck, stumbling over even understanding what Mandarin he could discern from her words. He looked at Lucifer helplessly.

  
There might have been a smile on Lucifer’s face, but it was gone in an instant as he spouted off another long string of syllables at the young woman. She nodded happily and went off to the kitchen.

  
“Still part of the dickishness?” Sam asked with exasperated humour.

  
“Always.”

  
“What was she asking?”

  
Lucifer picked up a knife and spun it on the table, watching it wobble slightly from imbalanced weight. “She wanted to know if we cared for drinks. I told her I would take a glass of ginger tea and that you wanted ice water to start out with.”

  
Sam had gotten pulled in by the motion and glint from the knife, but he looked up again, “Couldn’t you have just asked what I wanted to drink?”

  
“Had you looked at a menu yet?” Lucifer retorted kindly.

  
The way Sam’s expression changed into something thoughtful was evidence enough that Lucifer had a point. Looking down at the menu, Sam grimaced, “And this is all in gobbilygook too.”

  
“Not a linguist, are you? Tell me what you’d normally order from a Chinese restaurant and I’ll find the closest equivalents.”

  
“And you are?” Sam sounded sceptical as he set the menu down. “But I either go for sweet and sour pork or orange chicken.”

  
Lucifer shrugged in a noncommittal way. “I’m a Shadowrunner, every little talent helps.”

  
“I think you’ve got a thing for appearing mysterious too,” he said as he relaxed into the seat, legs spreading out into some semblance of comfort under the low table.

  
“It is hard not to get off on knowing more than the next guy; watching him flounder around making guesses while you hold all the cards.”

  
“Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

  
Inclining his head Lucifer chuckled softly, “Can do.” He turned polite again as the waitress returned with their drinks and took their meal orders. Once she was off to the kitchen, he smoothed out a wrinkle on his pant leg. “So, down to business?”

  
Sam sipped at his water, free of the common heavy mineral taint the city water had taken on after the last filtration centre blow out. The strong magical energies of the ley lines in the area had a bad habit of wreaking havoc on mechanical assemblies, but thankfully most tech was guarded against such interference. “Sounds good.” He pulled out the photo album that had shown up on their last vid call. Spreading out documents in such a way that no one would mistakenly oversee anything, he started outlining what he’d uncovered on his own.

  
“The CPS branch that took me in was a front, owned through subsidiaries by the Consortium.” Wasn’t terribly uncommon, the Consortium had fingers in all sorts of pies. “The branch was in operation for only six months, almost to the day. Whatever their job was, they were under a deadline. What records I’ve been able to find from the time they closed up shop show that it was an orderly retreat, nothing rushed about it. So I doubt they were trying to flee anything.”

  
Lucifer nodded and rubbed one of the pages between the fingers of his natural hand, enjoying the simple texture of real paper. Flimsy stuff, but he could still tell it was actual wood pulp once upon a time, none of that soy-extract-synthesised-protein-mash amalgamation that most people preferred these days. “I looked into what was left of their front on the Matrix and it was definitely a well thought out façade. I’d agree with you about their time frame being predetermined. There wasn’t the general debris left from a hasty retreat, but I did find a few things, odd bits and bytes they likely didn’t think were important enough to worry about.”

  
He looked up at Lucifer expectantly. “Oh?”

  
“There were a few hashtags they might have used for internal organisation, but nothing I could query real information from. However there was a partial link that I was able to track down, to here.” Pulling up a holoscreen on his ARI, he tossed it over a direct infrared channel to Sam’s display; a much more secure means of sharing digital information than using the networks or the Matrix. “It was another business, used to be owned by Consortium. They were a data mining company, specialising in--,”

  
Sam interrupted, reading off the details of their About page, “The discovery and recruitment of uniquely talented and qualified individuals. Head hunters?”

  
“You were taken from your father and brother, supposedly by a CPS branch.” Lucifer frowned as he dumped a sugar packet into his tea, stirring it with the end of his chopstick. “Obviously someone was looking for qualified individuals to recruit.”

  
“Head hunters for children,” he echoed mournfully.

  
“It’s a sick world, someone has to go out and data mine for successful kidnappings.”

  
Sam watched a drop of water form from the condensation on the outside of his glass before it slowly trickled down against his thumb. He swiped his thumb through the condensation and rubbed the moisture off on his napkin. “Well, if they were the company that found me, then there might be a money trail to follow.”

  
Lucifer pulled out a business card and handed it over to Sam. “Way ahead of you. I couldn’t find out much from the business it led to, but I was able to get that.”

  
On the back of the card was Lucifer’s precise script, a small note that made Sam’s pulse spike. “They were looking for my mother’s DNA?”

  
“They tried to find your whole extended family. I found requisitions into your cousins, your aunts, uncles. Hell, one of the requisitions was trying to get your grandfather exhumed. Whatever was special about her side of the family,” the steam from the tea momentarily fogged up Lucifer’s optics as he took a sip, “they were going to a huge trouble to find just the right combination. I found out that every other family member they got their hands on was eventually returned. Some were detained on legal grounds, trumped up charges, entirely fictionalised reports, you name it, but even with that the next longest abduction period was three years. You appear to have been the only one they decided to keep.”

  
Emotions played across Sam’s face as he took that all in. Poor kid looked like he’d just been punched in the gut.

  
“So I was the genetic lottery winner they were looking for?”

  
“I guess, unless you struck out too after the ten years.”

  
The waitress came over and shot off a quick question to Lucifer and he nodded towards Sam, so she set down a heavily laden plate of sweet and sour pork with a side of fried rice. She put down a small bowl of wonton soup in front of Lucifer before excusing herself with another melodic sentence.

  
Sam looked from his plate to Lucifer’s, “Not hungry?”

  
“Eh, I just don’t eat much at any one sitting. Too hard to digest a lot if I have to end up running from bullets.” Lucifer picked up his soup spoon and bent over the bowl, simply taking in the goodness of the aroma. There was also the fact that as his dosage of anti-rejection drugs got higher and higher, his appetite was adversely affected. Couldn’t eat a full plate of food without puking even if he wanted to.

  
“Makes sense.” Sam’s tone was so noncommittal that it wasn’t apparent if he believed him or not. Breaking apart his wooden chopsticks he briefly slid them over one another, knocking off possible splinters, before he took a bite.

  
“I’ve heard in some circles that’s considered offensive.”

  
Sam raised an eyebrow as he chewed.

  
Lucifer sipped and let the flavours bloom, relishing it. Some days it was a really nice thing that his tongue was still bona fide organic. “Fancy Japanese shops provide you with real nice chop sticks; if you rub them together it shows you don’t trust them on giving you a quality utensil.”

  
The dumb smirk on Sam’s face shouldn’t have been that endearing. “Yeah, well these certainly don’t look high quality.”

  
“No, more the dime a dozen special.”

  
“Dimes, man,” he took a moment to chew another bite. “How long has it been since real coinage was around?”

  
“Well over twenty years.” Lucifer bit into a wonton and tried to guess which meat they’d used today, maybe a shrimp-chicken blend? Or was there a hint of cow in there? Hmm.

  
Oh, twenty years meant they would have phased out during the black hole in Sam’s memory. That had to be hard, having such a large chunk of time missing.

  
Somehow it didn’t feel polite to ask.

  
“Do you like it?” Changing the topic was always a solid plan.

  
“Yeah,” Sam coughed as he swallowed a bite too fast in his haste to respond. “This is pretty amazing. Not sure if it would be worth the trip all the way down here, but if I’m ever in the area I’d definitely come back.”

  
“Good, good. Sadly that’s all I’ve been able to figure out so far, but I’ll keep digging.”

  
He waved a hand, “Don’t worry, that’s more than I’ve been able to figure out on my own in seven years. Whatever you’re able to dig up is great.”

  
**-Sorry to interrupt your hot date, but thought you’d want a heads up.**

  
Lucifer held up a finger to have Sam hold that thought. The ARI came up in a flash and he saw the agitated little owl pecking at the edge of his visual field. **//Why do I get the feeling this isn’t the nice kind of heads up about a sale on my favourite pair of sunglasses.**

**-If only you were that lucky. More demons closing in on the kid’s tail again.**

  
**//Funny how that happens. For someone who tries his best to be off the grid, I was able to pick him off just an unsecured traffic cam. See if you can whip up a few protective digital scramblers for him while I get him out the back way, huh?**

  
**-For you? Anything. Just bring me back some rock candy, eh?**

  
**//You’re such a hard sell.**

  
**-I know. Just about break your bank with the favours I call in.**

  
**//Right G4b3. See you by lunch.**

  
**-Roger.** With a mock salute, G4b3’s avatar disappeared in an explosion of downy feathers.

  
Lucifer sighed and wired money directly to the restaurant, giving them a slightly more generous tip than normal in case his business brought any unwanted attention down on their heads. “You’re being tailed again.”

  
“More demons?” Sam asked without missing a beat, shovelling in a few hurried bites as he stood up.

  
“I could get you a box for that if you’d like?” Seemed a waste to leave good food behind. Funny how he couldn’t care less that his own bowl was barely touched.

  
“Nah, we’re going to have to run, aren’t we?”

  
Lucifer thought it over and nodded.

  
“Then it’d only be in the way. I’ll just have to come back another time for a full sit down meal.” Pulling out his cred chip, he scanned the indecipherable menu one more time, not coming up with any symbols that made sense for pricing “How much do I owe you?”

  
“Not the time, Sammy.” Breezing past him, Lucifer pulled open the door while still keeping himself safe behind the door jam, and ran a quick scan on the crowd. His combat mini map was still coming online, so he wasn’t certain if hostiles knew exactly where they were yet or if they were still closing in. “I already covered the bill.”

  
Falling into step when Lucifer left the shop, Sam grimaced, “I really don’t like owing people. Technically we’re here because I’ve hired you to do a job.”

  
Lucifer’s arm shot out and he hauled Sam back against a pylon, a laser shot barely missing them. “Do we really have to get into this now? Let’s get somewhere safe before we argue over going Dutch.”

  
Sam rolled his eyes but let the subject drop. “You lead, I’ll follow.”

  
“Music to my ears, if only my team was as well-mannered as you, kid.”

  
“Not a kid.”

  
Another laser shot just barely missed them as the narrow subterranean alley swiftly cleared of venders, the few pedestrians shopping only adding chaos as they screamed inappropriately at the weapon discharges. Dumb civilians never knew what to worry over. Well, alright, so a laser wound could kill you just as dead as any standard bullet, but they were a whole lot less painful, what with the instant cauterisation.

  
Lucifer threw himself across the open gap between the pylon and the safety of the far wall. “Stay there a sec.” Hacking into a security camera he calculated the angle he’d need to get in order to hit their pursuer, a deep breath and then his .45 was blazing in the dim hallway, and his bullet struck home.

  
Sam mouthed ‘wow’ at him.

  
He was a professional, gorammit. The kid should be impressed. “Clear. Stay on my six and try not to get killed or captured.”

“Thank you for making me feel like extra baggage. I’m not bad in a fight, you already know that,” Sam griped as they made their way toward the lower street level exit.

  
Lucifer tossed him a glance over his shoulder, “Do you have a weapon on you?”

  
“Well, no--,”

  
“Do you have any identification scrambling programs running?”

  
“Didn’t really think to--,”

  
“Exactly. I’m sure you’re great in a fight, but I’d rather we have you avoid them in the first place.” Being prepared meant you spent less time trying to clean the blood out of your clothes. It also, incidentally, meant you didn’t have as many black market hospital bills. “Listen, once we lose this tail, I’m taking you back to my place and introducing you to my hacker. He’s going to set you up with some programs to keep this from happening each time we meet up.”

  
“Aww, you don’t enjoy that something special I bring to our rendezvous?” Sam asked playfully as he checked Lucifer’s blind spot.

“Oh Sammy, don’t get me wrong. I love any excuse I can get to kill demons,” or to watch you do that thing where you drink them down like a fine wine, “but I prefer to ambush others, not the other way around.” Lucifer led them out into the back alley, the old gum wall still a favourite tourist attraction. He gave the living wall of pre-masticated gum a wide berth. “If you called me up and said that you wanted to go on a hunt specifically for demons, I’d be all smiles. Having them interrupt my breakfast is another matter.”

  
“No argument here.”

  
This time it was Sam who grabbed Lucifer and pulled him back as a demon dropped down nearly on top of them, having jumped from the overhang several stories above them. The sound of the demon’s impact was grotesque enough to give both men sympathy pain for the monster’s joints.

  
Segmented katana flashing out with its mechanical snicker-snack, the demon was freed of his head. “Thanks.”

  
“Don’t mention it. Least I can do when I forgot to bring a weapon with me.” The spare .45 was pressed into Sam’s hand. “Oh, that works too.”

  
“Should have armed you from the get-go. My mistake.” Lucifer fell silent as he ran forward again, weight low and centred as he held the katana delicately with his right hand, left hand ready on the grip of his pistol. “ARI’s finally compiled data on the unfriendlies. Looks like there’s a hit squad of ten this time. We must have made someone angry last time.” **//Here, linking you in to my combat awareness.**

  
**\\\I’m going to develop a complex over all your darn tech, you know that right?**

  
**//Good complex?** Lucifer visually cleared another street and started running up the steep incline of the hill.

  
**\\\Green with envy sort of complex**. Sam kept pace, holding the pistol with both hands as he ran, keeping it pointed at the ground. Good to see that hunch about the kid having weapon training was spot on.

  
**//I’ll take that as a compliment then.** The ARI wasn’t showing any other hostiles up this road, but a good old visual verification never hurt. Tech was good, helpful, but anything could be hacked. “How are you with motorcycles?” He couldn’t help his grin as he heard the slight falter in Sam’s stride.

  
“You have a motorcycle? Of course you have a goram motorcycle.”

  
“That’s not an answer.”

  
Sam laughed, “Sorry. I’m good; I can hang on if that’s what you’re asking.”

  
Lucifer checked another corner before flicking his wrist and collapsing his katana, “Good, because if you came in a car they’ve likely already swarmed it. Demons might not be the smartest breed of Nether beings, but with proper motivation they’re thorough.”

  
“Ah, no car. I took the tram.” Sam explained as he stuffed the pistol awkwardly into his jacket pocket, not actually letting go of it.

  
“Nothing wrong with that. I take the tram pretty often.” Lucifer ducked down a side alley that emptied out into a largely deserted Diamond parking lot, his motorcycle nearly the only vehicle in the place.

  
Sam whistled low. “Now that is a ride.”

  
The machine was a sleek package, jet black with faintly embossed wing decals. There were weapon sleaves on both sides that retracted flush into the fairing, a suspension system that looked vastly overpowered for street use, variable structure wheels, and a retractable wind shield. “And it runs on what? Nitric? Nuclear?”

  
“Would you believe… double As?” Lucifer asked as he put a hand on the bike and the beast turned on, completely silent. The only sign that it had turned on were the lights that now decorated the instrument cluster.

  
Sam coughed out a laugh, halfway ready to believe it before he caught sight of the mischievous look on Lucifer’s face. "But she is electric?"

  
“Yes. Sorry, I’ve always wanted to try to convince someone of that. It runs off a bank of carbon nanotubes. They make the most advanced lithion ion look like a glorified spark plug. Lighter, far higher capacity, nearly no internal resistance.” He held out a helmet to Sam. “I hope you don’t have a weak stomach, because this gal gets up and goes.”

  
“I guess we’ll find out,” Sam muttered to himself as he pulled on the spare helmet, pleasantly surprised to find it fit without being too snug. “Looks like they’re closing in,” the red blips were trying to circle around behind them.

  
Rooftops maybe?

  
“Duly noted. Get on.”

  
Sam didn’t have to be told twice, and he laced his fingers together over the older man’s stomach.

  
The motorcycle didn’t need sound to broadcast what a fine machine she was, she did it through her unnatural silence. As was befitting a ride for a street samurai, she was almost soundless as she shifted gears and Lucifer expertly danced through the lanes of traffic, only her chain and tires making noise. Leaning down over his gas tank and into each turn, he put her through her paces with a reckless abandon for caution. Break lights blurred around them as they moved into the thin space between two lanes and rode the dashed line right past the stalled traffic.

  
Lucifer was proud that the kid didn’t scream when they narrowly missed being t-boned by a taxi cab and had to pop up onto the sidewalk.

  
Of course it wasn’t surprising that when he had to almost lay the bike down to dodge a shot from a sniper he felt Sam’s arms tighten around him, and he couldn’t keep from grinning at that.

  
Nothing wrong with some healthy fear.

  
Now to just get them out of this alive.

  
Concentrating on not running into anything meant he couldn’t go about shooting back at the would-be assassins, “Sam, how good are you with moving targets?” He felt Sam’s grip tighten again instinctively at the thought of only holding on with one arm.

  
However Sam yelled back up to him over the howl of the air whipping past them, “Proficient.” Then there was one less arm clinging to Lucifer’s core and the sharp report of a gun was stolen by the wind.

  
**//Sammy, I’d give you a medal for adaptability on the field if I had any.** Lucifer switched back to ARI communication as he cornered around the turn for the I-5 onramp, an electrical impulse shooting through the wheels to soften them for more traction.

  
**\\\I don’t need a medal, but I appreciate the thought. Just get me out of this alive, alright?**

  
**//Roger will co.**

  
An expanded view of the streets took up station on the left half of his vision, translucent enough that he wouldn’t suffer a blind spot while driving. There was a highlighted car two lanes over and several hundred yards behind them that was filled with red blips, closing fast. So, this was to become a high speed chase. Figures.

Another swiftly stolen report from Sam's pistol and one of the cars following them was suddenly driverless and careened into the median.

  
Lucifer pulled in the clutch and popped her up into sixth gear with a quick snap of his foot, and she rocketed out away from their tail. Her quietly efficient purr from before was all but lost in the wind but she vibrated with power beneath him. Anyone who tried to say his ride wasn’t equal parts practicality and pure sex appeal on wheels was in denial.

  
Slipping through another narrow opening between cars, he crossed three lanes and shot off the ramp for SR 520.

  
**-Ooooooh, are we gonna film this for the next episode of Most Wanted?** G4b3 chipped in, obviously enjoying the show.

  
**//Hacking my visual feed again?**

  
**-There was absolutely nothing worth watching on cable. How do you make 160 mph look so easy?**

  
**//Pracitice.** Lucifer ducked around a minivan and continued speeding up on the relatively straight stretch of road, the dip down towards the water giving him an added edge. The wind was a solid wall of white noise and he used that to his advantage, shrinking his world to the road directly around him and the feel of his bike.

  
**-What’s the plan?**

  
**//Thought the trees would be lovely this time of year.**

  
G4b3 pulled up a map of the Arboretum, instantly catching on to Lucifer’s idea. **–Mmmmm, it is a good place to do a little killing without worrying about prying electronic eyes.**

  
**//My thoughts exactly, if I can’t lose them on the way there. Any chance you could flag them as a threat on the police bands?**

  
**-Way ahead of you, Luci. Now to see if there’s any way I can delay them long enough to get the cops to stand a chance catching them.**

  
**//Criminals these days, no respect for the boys in blue.**

  
**-None.**

  
**\\\I think we’ve just about lost them.** Sam tugged on the bottom hem of Lucifer’s jacket in case the man was focusing too hard to notice his message.

  
**-Oooh, are we turning this into a group chat?**

  
**\\\Um...**

  
Lucifer rolled his eyes, but still made introductions as he blew right on past another slew of slower moving cars. **//Sam, meet G4b3, my hacker.**

  
**-And roommate.**

  
**//G4b3, this is Sam.**

  
**-You’re the hot piece of ass that Luci keeps helping out, nice to meet you Tiger.**

  
**\\\Hot piece of ass?**

  
**-Speaking the truth in love.**

  
Switching his attention away from whatever next inane comments G4b3 was going to bombard Sam with, Lucifer signalled and left the freeway, glad when he saw the stoplight was green. He’d hate to have to run a light. As dangerous as it was to weave through traffic, it was quite another thing to try and get through intersecting traffic.

  
The drive along Lake Washington was as picturesque as ever, but going almost triple the suggested speed limit likely meant that poor Sam wasn’t going to get the full effect. Messages kept running up on the lower right quadrant of his overlay, but he staunchly ignored them, until one popped up directly in the middle of his screen.

  
**-LUCI! Idiot, stop ignoring me. My scans show that you’ve lost them, but I’d still take your bike into the Arboretum just in case.**

  
It was only by long practice and nerves of steel that Lucifer didn’t swerve off the road. **//Gorammit, G4b3. Driving. Don’t overlay my visual field.**

  
**-Not trying to kill you, just trying to get you to listen.**

  
One of these days he was going to wring that kid’s neck. Seriously. Did no one understand safety protocol anymore?

  
Well, if he was fair, he was an AI with an ability to multitask that far surpassed any human’s, but still… it was the principle of the thing.

  
_G4b3 has never been one to respect what a distraction an ARI message can be during a mission._

  
**//ALL OF YOU! SHUT. UP. I am trying to drive.** Alright, so an ARI message would mean next to nothing to the ghosts in his programming, but it sure felt good to be able to let the frustration out somehow.

  
For one blessed moment everyone decided to leave his ARI clear, until he felt Sam shaking with laughter behind him.

  
**\\\Or you’ll turn this bike around?**

  
Children, he was surrounded by children.

  
He finally slowed as he drove up the long drive into the park, his bike easily passing the meagre security that kept cars off the staff road. Just a little further until he had his bike hidden behind a small copse of trees. Turning off his bike, he patted her gas tank as he listened to her subtle clicks as the fan cooled the radiator. “Good girl.”

  
**-She’s a girl?**

  
“Did you name her?” Sam asked as soon as he’d pried his head free from the padding of the helmet, tossing his head to get his bangs out of his face.

  
“Of course.

  
**-You named and gendered your bike?**

  
**//G4b3, it’s a long standing tradition that vessels are female, think of all the ships of the line**. Pulling off his own helmet, Lucifer ran a hand through his hair briefly. “Her name is Umbra”

  
**-She’s not exactly a frigate, Luci.**

  
Sam patted the rise of cushion that served as her passenger seat, obviously approving of her. “So she’s the shadow given off by the Morningstar? Fitting.”

  
Lucifer stiffened as he was pulling off his gloves, gaze instantly scanning Sam’s face to see if there was recognition there but he saw none. “Oh, you know the meaning of Lucifer, huh? Not too many do these days.”

  
“I’ve studied a bit.” Looking around at the trees that towered over him, he obviously didn’t know what other meanings that name carried.

  
“Fancy that, studied and smart.” Taking a deep breath, Lucifer forced himself to relax, pulling off both gloves and stuffing them into his helmet.

  
**-You forgot sexy.**

  
“He’s right. You forgot sexy.”

  
Lucifer allowed himself a sigh, “You’re both ridiculous.” **//How are we looking with those tails?**

  
**-Good. I’ll keep a monitor on them, but I’d say give it a half an hour just to be safe and you should be in the clear.**

  
**//Glad to hear it. How are those programs coming?**

  
**\\\Programs?**

  
**-Luci here thought you could use some help with not getting tracked down all the time.**

  
**\\\Oh, thanks.**

  
**-Don’t thank me, Luci gives the order and I get to work. Speaking of, they’re done, should I switch tracks back to the job?**

  
If G4b3 had any larger of a mouth, the whole multiverse would just fall right in. **//Yes, G4b3. Get back to work. Thanks again for your assistance.**

  
**-Anytime, boss. Just remember that rock candy.** Then G4b3 signed off and Lucifer could feel him break connection with his visual feed.

  
Sam was leaning against an evergreen, watching Lucifer guiltily, “Asking you to help me out, did I pull you away from an actual paying gig?”

  
See? Complications.

  
And what gave Sam the right to have such adorable puppy eyes?

  
Lucifer hung his helmet over a handlebar, “No, not really. We’re still in the research stage of the job, so I’ve got the time.” Barely, between the countdown on full system failure in his body and all hell breaking loose on this job.

  
“Glad to hear it. Because like I said, I’m not in any great hurry here.”

  
Lucifer sat down on a log and stretched, first his legs and then his back. “That’s good, because apparently we’re stuck here for half an hour.”

  
Sam grinned as he dropped onto the log. “Not quite how I expected to spend my morning.”

  
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes as Lucifer continued stretching out and running brief diagnostics on his systems. Overhead the sky was an expanse of pale cerulean, without a single cloud visible through the tree cover. Finches were chirping in a nearby Japanese maple. Baring the assassination attempt earlier, it really was a picturesque day.

  
“You know,” Sam began, “I’ve lived in Seattle for almost a year now and I never even knew this was here.”

  
Lucifer held a finger up to his lips before pointing out to a small meadow down the hill from them, where a petite ebony bunny was carefully hopping about. No one knew exactly why, but most non-domesticated animals had fled the cities after the Conjoining, likely something to do with the resurgence of magical energy. **//Not too many people come out this way anymore. ARI overlays allow them to see the city however they want, so who needs a real park?**

  
Sam held his breath as he watched another bunny hop out of the bushes and join the first one. **\\\But how could any overlay, any artificial construction, hope to live up to this? Unexpected bunnies included.**

  
**//Personal opinion? I don’t know. I’ve always like this place, it’s peaceful. It also has practically no surveillance and is a wonderful place to kill someone unobserved.**

  
“You really are something else,” Sam replied aloud, as if spoken words would carry his message better.

  
“How do you mean?”

  
Linking his hands behind his head, he leaned against a tree and stretched his legs out. “I mean, just look at you. You swoop in like some pulp fiction super hero to save me, not once but twice now. You drive a motorcycle, shoot with lethal precision, and yet you still take time to enjoy a park in the middle of a crumbling metropolis.” A strange expression crossed Sam’s face as he tried to compress all of that down into his view of a single man, “I don’t know, you’re just different. It’s certainly not every day I meet someone who appreciates reality in this artificial age of ours.”

  
Ah. Inadvertent irony at its finest.

  
Lucifer put his hand to the bark of the log he was sitting on and enjoyed the feel of its grooves and peaks, took a deep breath in to hold onto the smells of cedar and pine. “I appreciate what I’m not.”

  
Not understanding the meaning Lucifer had been going for, Sam laughed, “Well, I’m glad you’re not a tree. That’d be awkward.”

  
Better the kid didn’t catch on. “Me too. Think of the sap I’d leave everywhere.” Glancing at his watch, he checked the scans of the area again. It hadn’t been quite twenty minutes yet, but things seemed pretty clear. “Well, shall we get going?”

  
“Yup,” Sam rose up and brushed off the back of his pants. “We going to actually go the speed limit this time?” he asked as he went over and grabbed the spare helmet.

  
“More or less.”

  
“Oh, lucky me.”

  
Lucifer flashed a canine as he suited up again, “What’s life without a little speeding?”

  
“Legal?”

  
“You lawyers-in-training, buzz-kills, the lot of you.” Lucifer slipped his helmet back in place.

  
**\\\I kid, speed away.**

  
**//Addicting, isn’t it?**

  
**\\\I could get used to this, that’s for sure.**

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

“Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” Castiel said as he stood up and shook Lucifer’s hand as he joined him at the small corner.

  
“Cas, there’s really no need for the formalities.” Besides, who ever heard of having a clandestine meeting to discuss ominous and slightly too vague warnings from the elements in a McDonald’s? Really, a fast food joint?

  
Of course the four empty hamburger wrappers already littering Castiel’s tray might have had something to do with that. Shaman on a budget?

  
“How is it that even after the entire economy went to hell and back, McDonald's still came out on top, smelling like a rose.” Lucifer slipped into a seat, the vacuum-formed plastic chair uncomfortably slick beneath him.

  
“I believe that’s because of the air fresheners,” Castiel deadpanned.

  
About ready to chew Castiel out for being too literal, Lucifer held back his rebuke when he caught sight of Castiel’s small self-satisfied simper. People tended to underestimate the quiet shaman, thinking him slow or unintelligent simply because he didn’t spar wits with others or quip about popular culture; but there was quite the militant mind behind those blue eyes. “Well played. And McDonald's?”

  
“No one, who might be monitoring either of us, would think of it as a suitable meeting to discuss sensitive material.”

  
See, the guy was a militant genius, even if he wasn’t the leader type.

  
Lucifer swept crumbs off the table with mild distaste, “That tracks. Are we discussing sensitive material then?”

  
Castiel nodded. “I’ve been consulting with the elements. There is bad news and worse news.” He took a rather noisy sip of his drink, the straw pulling mostly air from between the ice cubes, and he frowned at it before looking back up at Lucifer. “Which do you want first?”

  
“I’ll start with the bad, I guess.”

  
“Wind was able to tell me that The Consortium has been storing vast quantities of electricity at their headquarters. This would coincide with the impending deadline of your body’s failure, wouldn’t it?” As a shaman, Castiel had been able to tell from nearly their first meeting that Lucifer lacked an anima or a spirit of any kind. So while he’d never asked or been told, he had pieced the larger picture together.

  
That news wasn’t too bad, nor entirely unexpected. It did let them know that they weren’t going in to steal files out from under a sleeping giant though; they were going into a busy bee hive. Wonderful. “This job certainly is shaping up to be more trouble than it’s worth.”

  
Reaching out he put a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder, “Then why don’t we cut our losses and leave it alone? I know your time is coming soon, but you have never been one to endanger us unnecessarily. Should any of us fall into the Consortium’s hands it would prove disastrous.”

  
“Don’t I know it.” Lucifer patted Castiel’s shoulder amicably, before shrugging off the well-meaning touch. “The files that Azazel has hired us to look into, they’re… my last chance. There are consequences to letting my time run out, and unless I can come up with one hell of a contingency plan, I will fall into their hands either way.”

  
A crease formed between Castiel’s eyebrows as he digested that, “Then these files, this mission, will keep you with us?”

  
“If all goes right. The files should contain the identity of the vessel the Consortium made for me, the permanent vessel they’d meant for me to inhabit.”

  
“And if this vessel is already in their hands?”

  
Lucifer kept his face impassive even as he internally grimaced, “That’s a possibility, but I don’t believe they do. But if they’ve got my True Vessel, then I’ll have to extract it.”

  
“Very well.”

  
“You understand that I wouldn’t ask you along on any extra tangents this mission might take. As far as you all are concerned, we get the files and we’re done.”

  
Castiel canted his head slightly to the side, “We would follow you to the end, Lucifer. You can not expect us to abandon you. You are the reason we are all working on the same team.”

  
“I--,” Lucifer wet his lips as he tried to think of a proper response. He wanted to brush it aside or laugh it off, but he stopped himself. “Thank you, Castiel. It’s good knowing you’re with me.”

  
“I decided to serve you when I left Eden, I would never forgive myself for changing sides simply because it got hard or dangerous. But this does touch on the worse news.” Leaning in he murmured, “Wind and Spirit loosely share dominion over data signals, and they have both reported to me that coded transmissions are routinely being sent to the Eden database with increasing regularity.”

  
Gorammit. “Are you suggesting we have a mole?”

  
“It’s entirely possible. The elements are not in true control over technology, merely the natural energies that weave into the systems, so their insight into this is limited. However they can concretely say the signals are all originating from within the city, and the date that they began directly correlates with the storage of electricity.” Castiel pulled out a datachip from the inner pocket on his trench coat. “This is the digital signature that the elements were able to recreate for me. If you give it G4b3 I am certain he would be able to monitor for it and give you more specific information.”

  
Taking the datachip Lucifer worried at his chapped lip, pulling a thin strip of skin off unintentionally. “G4b3 normally should have been the one to catch this, not the elements.” He licked at the blood that welled up. “No offense.”

  
“None taken.”

  
“Which begs the question why he hasn’t.” He sighed and dropped his face into his hand, massaging the bridge of his nose. This was the problem with conspiracies. As soon as you had any evidence that there might be a mole on your team, you inherently suspected everyone. “Okay, give me a second to think this over.”

  
He’d never told G4b3 much of anything pertaining to the Eden Project specifically to keep the kid safe. The only thing G4b3 liked more than candy was a high security risk to play with. So he’d done his absolute best to keep G4b3 from setting foot anywhere near the Eden Project servers, which meant there would have been no reason for their hacker to be monitoring for coded transmissions. Alright, plausible enough.

  
Lucifer raised his head back up, “I’ll have him look into it. Maybe he’ll be able to pinpoint where exactly those signals are being broadcast from. If we get inordinately lucky, he might even be able to crack it.” Not exactly a likely scenario, but right now he needed something nice to hope for and that was as good as anything. “I don’t suppose the elements said when the signals started?”

  
Castiel’s dour expression intensified, “Time can be relative for the elements.”

  
Clapping a hand against his thigh, Lucifer tried not to let it get to him. “Right. Well, it was a long shot anyways. Any other portents of doom?”

  
“No. Wind was unable to explain any further exactly what is brewing in the Matrix, and Fire was unwilling to lend aid in this research.”

  
“I understand. The elements aren’t really meant for spy work.”

  
“Exactly. They were only willing to do what they did because they can feel imbalance approaching.”

  
The elements strove to maintain balance seasonally, but also universally. If they felt an imbalance was coming, that could count as the worst news of all.

  
It was hard for Lucifer not to sigh as he stood up, “Send them my thanks.”

  
They walked to the street corner together in silence, the anonymous press of the city helping to insulate their thoughts. When they both stopped to wait for the street to clear, Lucifer looked over and noticed Castiel watching him critically. “Yeah?”

  
“What happens if we are unable to get your vessel before this body fails, Lucifer?”

  
Something inside him hurt as he let out a slow breath, watched it fog white and curl in the slight breeze. “Then my coding, my… self, is ejected to the Matrix and they’ll use me to destroy the Nether. I’ll be forced to become the villain they’ve always wanted; and really, everyone loses then.”

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

Barely two in the afternoon and already Lucifer was exhausted, funny how demon assassins and bad news could do that. He trudged up the stairs and fished into his pockets for his keys. G4b3 constantly got on his case over the fact that he trusted a flimsy lock and deadbolt system over a genetic scanner or an implant sensor, but changing out the locks had always seemed like too much of a hassle. Plus he liked the feel of a key slipping the tumblers, sliding home. It was probably too much sentimental whimsy for G4b3 to understand anyway.

  
Pushing against the door didn’t so much as budge it, so he quickly double checked that he’d undone the deadbolt. It was unlocked. Grunting and tossing his shoulder against the door, it gave way slowly as something heavy scraped across the floor. So he poked his head around and peered in through the gap he’d force open, only to discover their étagère had been shoved against the door. “Expecting company, G4b3?” Careful not to use too much power, he used his augmented strength to push the door in far enough for him to enter.

  
“Oh, sorry about that Luci,” G4b3 called out, poking his head out from the kitchen with a knife held awkwardly in his hand.

  
Lucifer stared exasperatedly at G4b3 while he stripped off his jacket. “Do I want to know?”

  
“Heh, um.” As if just noticing that he was holding the knife, G4b3 coughed and set it down on the counter. “I was in the middle of a deep dive about an hour ago, I think, and I got the feeling that someone was watching me. Seeing as I was nosing around that Eden Project firewall again, I figured anyone catching me there would be bad news. Right?”

  
“So you decided to bar the door in case anyone came in guns blazing?” Lucifer knew all too well that prolonged dives into the Matrix always keyed G4b3 up.

  
“Oh, that? No. I put the étagère in front of the door about ten minutes ago when I found out that there was a phishing virus specifically targeting me.” The shorter man rested one bunny slipper over the other, and Lucifer had the ludicrous feeling they were comforting each other, “So I got a little paranoid. When I’m trying to run around invisible, I don’t like people noticing me.”

  
Kicking off his boots and hanging his coat back up on its peg, he put his hands on his hips as he looked over the misplaced furniture. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. But how did you even move this on your own?”

  
The scuff marks on the floor and G4b3’s guilty expression answered that question.

  
But then G4b3 was throwing him one of his patented grins, “Better safe than sorry, right? Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.”

  
“Right.” Hands firmly gripping the sides of the étagère, Lucifer blew out a quick puff and hefted the entire thing several inches off the ground. “Make way.” His augmented limbs and musculature made it easier, but this was still a heavy piece to move, especially if he didn’t want to damage it or gouge a wall along the way.

  
“I’m gone.”

  
Sidestepping down the hall and into their small dining area, he returned it to its regular place.

  
All in a day’s work, save Sam from demons, convene a war council with Castiel, and reorganise the furniture. One of these things is not like the others.

  
G4b3 was back at his desk, popping a chocolate covered strawberry into his mouth. “So,” he spoke around it, “what did Mr Serious have to say?”

  
“Gravely serious warnings.” Lucifer patted his pockets in search of the datachip but nothing turned up; maybe he’d left it in his coat. His feet click-clacked unnaturally as he strode back to the entryway, “Apparently the Consortium is powering back up their operations.”

  
“Well, we kind of expected that, right? We couldn’t just have this be an easy jo--,”

  
Lucifer interrupted him, “And he believes we have a mole.” He watched G4b3’s smile drop off instantly. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Here’s what information he had on it.” Plugging the datachip into a port, he leaned over G4b3’s shoulder to watch him work. “He said that the elements weren’t able to give him too much concrete information on the signal, but apparently it’s a coded transmission originating in the city and it’s increasing in frequency.”

  
Fingers flying, G4b3 gave perfunctory nods. Windows opened as he started sifting through the strange files that were on the chip. “Gorammit. Why can’t Cas ever use standard software?”

  
“Because he prefers freeware? Also I think he explained once that he has to use a pretty special rig for the elements to be able to interact with it as well.” A beep signalling an incoming call drew Lucifer’s attention. “I’m just glad our shaman is comfortable using a computer at all. You got this?”

  
“What? Yeah, I’m good. You go, this will take a while.” G4b3 waved him off.

  
Moving to the living room to take the call, Lucifer gave himself a quick once over in the dim reflection of the windows. Well, he wasn’t going to win any beauty contests, but he looked presentable enough. Blinking hard his ARI maximised and the call opened a window, the visual feed coming through from the caller’s end so he could decide if he wanted to take the call. The caller was a good looking woman, brunette with a real air of self-reliance about her, except at the moment she looked indecisive. He decided to take the call. “Hello, Ms… ?”

  
“Oh, Madison, just Madison is fine.”

  
Madison? Where did he know that name from? Oh. Right. Sam’s girlfriend, Madison. Why in the world was she calling?

  
Deciding to play it cool, Lucifer nodded in greeting, “Alright, Madison. What can I do for you?”

  
Once again she seemed indecisive, but after a steadying breath her features set into a look that only ever spelled trouble. “You could start off with telling me why Sam has hired your services.”

  
“I’m sorry Madison, but it’s not my policy to discuss my client’s cases with others.” It had been a while since he’d run into trouble over angry spouses and significant others, not since he’d stopped taking basic PI type jobs. If he never had another job to find out if the husband was cheating, it would be too soon.

  
“Don’t think you can just give me that. I know Sam’s past is... complicated.” She flipped her hair out of her face and pursed her lips into a thin line. “Listen, I just want to know if he’s in trouble. He’s been distracted, and then the other day he said he’d hired a Shadowrunner to look into some stuff for him.” Somehow she didn’t come off sounding intrusive or overbearing as so many jealous spouses did, and Lucifer found himself beginning to feel a grudging respect for her.

  
He could throw her a bone without breaking any confidentiality with Sam. “Listen, Madison, you know that he’s been on the run for a long time, so you already know he’s in trouble already. I’m doing what I can to help him keep a lower profile; hopefully pull back on the regularity of demons attacks. Mostly I’m just looking into some old records for him, clerical things.”

  
Madison stared at him for a long moment. Finally she nodded, “Lords of the Nether, you must think I’m some kind of paranoid girlfriend.”

  
“Not terribly. You care about him, it’s natural to want to know if things are about to go south.”

  
She shifted her weight, “You don’t think I’m being too intrusive?”

  
Lucifer smirked as he shook his head, “Not terribly. I’d almost say you were a jealous woman worried that your man was cheating on you, but somehow you strike me as too proud to ask someone other than Sam that.”

  
Whatever ease had been in her stance instantly evaporated and her gaze turned cold. “I wouldn’t joke about that, if I were you. Some people would think that was a backhanded insult.”

  
“My apologies.” It was, slightly, but more it was just a chance to see how she’d react. She was actually handling herself well, especially if she had trust issues and Sam was leaving her out of the loop. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  
“Mhmmm.” She didn’t sound as if she believed him at all. “You’re right about one thing, I’m too proud to tell you that if you lay one hand on my boyfriend inappropriately, you’d regret it.”

  
“Duly noted.” That decided it, he liked the gal. If Sam had to choose someone else over him, well, he could live with her being the one. “You hold onto that pride, it’ll take you far.”

  
She softened at that, sensing that Lucifer wasn’t a threat to Sam’s health or her own happiness. “Thank you. Are you going to tell me to keep a stiff upper lip next?”

  
Sassy too? Oh, she was a keeper. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  
“Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time, but I hope you’re able to find whatever records he needs. And,” Madison put her hands in her back pockets, “if you’re able to do anything to help Sam stay safe, then I guess that makes you alright in my book.”

  
“I’m glad to hear that. He’s lucky to have you.”

  
Her bark of laughter was unexpected as she shook her head, “Oh come on now, don’t push it. Sam told me about the incident at the club, so I know you’ve got at least a passing interest in him. That also told me you’re a gentleman in some respects, and that’s rare these days.”

  
Lucifer leaned against the wall, eyes looking past her into the city below, “In some respects. Don’t worry though, I’m not the type to intentionally pursue attached individuals. He’s cute, but he’s not that cute.”

  
“I wasn’t worried,” she replied in rapid fire, marginally defensive. “But all the same, that’s good to know.”

  
He was tempted to ask if Sam knew she was calling, but he decided not to push it. “Anything else I can do for you?” Please say no, the last thing he needed right now was more favours to do for people.

  
Remember that job? The one that gets more dangerous with each passing day? That needed to take priority.

  
Thankfully Madison declined. It looked like she was about to say goodbye when she turned her head in response to something off screen and the call was instantly terminated.

  
Chuckling to himself, Lucifer rested his cheek against the cool pane. That rather confirmed his suspicion that she hadn’t wanted Sam to know she was investigating the investigator. Oh well. They could work that out all on their lonesome.

  
Of course he was marginally surprised to hear that Sam had told her about the night at the club. It said something about how hard those two were trying to make their relationship work, admitting when they screwed up and kissed random strangers while intoxicated. Ah, young love.

  
What a day.

  
It was still too early to think about lying in bed for hours, but he could get a few hours of quality time researching Sam’s strange case. He collapsed onto the sofa and closed his eyes in preparation for dipping into the Matrix.

  
“Hey Luci, the fridge is empty.”

  
Lucifer opened his eyes and swore silently. “I’m assuming that means you want me to go get food?”

  
“I’ll love you forever if you do. Forever and a day if you bring back an attractive blonde to massage my shoulders while I unravel this funky shaman warning.” G4b3 sounded hopeful. That was never good.

  
Rolling his eyes, he pushed off against his knees and stood up. No rest for the wicked. “I’m an attractive blond, will I do?”

  
“But I wanted one with more boobs and sultry smiles than you,” pouted the hacker shamelessly.

  
“I’m not bringing you whores along with food. You’ll have to get one on your own.” Lucifer opened the fridge door and saw they were entirely out of food now. How had G4b3 gone through the last of their leftovers so fast?

  
“But you’re better at it.”

  
“Food or nothing,” he replied as he closed the door.

  
“Food, definitely food then. I can hack without erotic massages and kielbasa sausages, but I can’t hack without food.”

  
Kielbasa sausages? “Wouldn’t sausages fall under the category of food?”

  
G4b3 leaned back in his chair to look at Lucifer and waggled his eyebrows.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m just saying that I don’t think AIs should even be able to go crazy. They’re just lines of code. If something goes wrong up there, shouldn’t they just shut down or short circuit or something?”

“What? Didn’t you ever read 2001? Or Asimov?”

“No man, some of us aren’t geeks like you.”

“I take offense to that.”

“You would.”

Lucifer blinked and it seemed to take an eternity for his eyelids to open again.

“Alight, alright. I did see Hitchhiker’s Guide. Does that count?”

“That’s more satire than science fiction in a lot of ways--,”

“What? How do you figure? They were in space. That seems pretty sci fi to me.”

“Oh come on, how can you be so plebeian?”

Dragging a breath in, Lucifer lost another chunk of the guard’s asinine conversation to the pounding baseline of his heart. Blood rushed through his ears as he tried to sit up, only to be sent back down to the floor by another wave of vertigo and weakness. His joints ached as he lay on the soiled floor of his cell.

“More science fiction becomes science fact every year and yet you still have the audacity to call me a geek because I like to read the greats.” The younger guard scoffed.

“Audacity? Wow, you really do have a stick up your ass.”

“What?”

“GENTLEMEN!” A new voice cut in, commanding and slightly pinched. “How is our prisoner?”

Lucifer knew that third voice, could still vaguely put a face to it. The Warden didn’t appreciate when the guards took this work detail lightly. What were they all so afraid about? It wasn’t as if he was going to be able to break out of his prison. Hell, most days he couldn’t even get free of his own mind.

The static in the air increased, momentarily drowning out the voices. Ah, they’d turned on the scramblers again. Must be saying something important. If he could just scrape enough processing power together to alter the frequency he was listening at, he could hear them.

Light exploded into the room as the front door was drawn open, and Lucifer instinctively curled in on himself to try and hide from the burning brightness.

“When was the last time his cell was cleaned?” The Warden’s voice was filled with disgust as he peered into the foetid cell, rotting remnants of meals intermixed with fecal matter and effluvium. “Or fed?”

“Fed? He’s an AI--,” A gunshot silenced the impertinent guard.

“When was the last time he was fed?” the Warden asked again, addressing the younger guard.

Sounds of paper flipping furiously, “Two weeks ago, Sir. There’s a note here that orders were sent to hold his food until he broke in interrogation.”

“Damn, I thought I’d sent down an order to keep his vessel fed regularly. Who was the order sent by?"

The shaken guard checked the papers again. “It doesn’t say, just a note over the invoice for rations.”

“Alright.” The Warden took a deep breath before he went into the room, largely holding his breath as he inspected the mess. “We need this body to last a little longer. Can’t just go and have this vessel die on us because we’re careless.”

“Sir?”

“The boy is almost ready for Morningstar to be inserted, but not quite yet. Chuck’s notes hypothesised that if Morningstar spent any extended time in the Matrix, we’d lose it entirely.”

“Why?”

Calloused fingers gripped Lucifer’s bicep and squeezed, testing muscle mass. The arm was little more than a stick, and Lucifer lacked the strength to pull away. “It’s emaciated. Gorammit. We’ll have to take Morningstar to the infirmary. And as for your question, imagine if your consciousness was flung into an ocean of knowledge. Would you be able to hold onto the concept of yourself, or would you bleed away until you were only a part of that knowledge?”

Lucifer was hauled to his feet and he fought to not lean against the Warden, eyes still glued shut against the glare. The Warden smelled like diesel and ionized air.

“I’m not really sure, Sir, but I guess I can understand the idea. All that available data would break down the AI’s self-awareness or something?”

“Break it down or expand it beyond our ability to control it. That’s the theory at least, and either extreme would be bad for us.” The Warden dragged Lucifer out into the hallway, before shoving him down into a wheelchair. “Chuck was hypothesising, but with how important this one is to the upper brass, well, we don’t want to take any chances. Besides, we’re not a damn stalag here.”

The guard circled around behind the wheelchair, his steel toed boots noisy on the concrete floor as he began pushing Lucifer down the hall. One of the wheels squeaked rhythmically as they went. “Was it necessary to shoot him?”

“Whom?”

“The other guard.”

“Oh.” The Warden considered this, his voice became strident as he explained, “Yes, it was. I will not tolerate slovenly care from any of my guards. The amount of money that went into Morningstar’s project was astronomical, and they would like a sufficient return on that investment. We may not be a hotel down here, but even the lowliest guard or janitor should understand that each and every person inside Solitary is a potential asset for the Consortium. We are safeguarding these assets until such a time as they are useful again.” It was an impassioned speech, even if it held the tone of scripted practice.

“So if I had been the one to leave off feeding the AI?”

“You would have been shot,” he replied succinctly.

Lucifer could hear the young guard swallow. Obviously the lad felt it wiser to not press the issue that they had only been following orders. Double guessing the Warden never ended well.

“I see.”

They lapsed into silence as they continued to walk down the labyrinthine corridors of Solitary, momentarily waiting as one of the rotating sections aligned with their path, and again paused later when a whole cell block descended a level to ease their passing. Solitary was part prison, part storage facility. These subterranean depths held political prisoners, captured corporate espionage agents, experiments, potential test subjects, and things best left forgotten inside the womb of the dark. It was a modernised oubliette that operated in all three cardinal dimensions with mechanical precision. More importantly though, to date it was impregnable and inescapable.

Lucifer had long lost track of how long he had been entombed here.

By the time they were standing in front of the funicular doors that led to the surface levels, Lucifer was able to open his eyes and focus them for whole seconds at a time. The pain of the light had receded to a dull stab each time, but little of the visual data made sense to his overtaxed mind. With his body so ill, many of his processors were offline, limiting him to only the most basic computations.

A fragrant puff of air washed over him as the elevator doors opened, but he couldn’t place any of the scents. The Warden took over the wheelchair and pushed Lucifer in, “You may return to your post. I’ll take him up alone.”

“Sir,” the guard briefly paused, as if about to contest the order, but then he smartly nodded and started back the way they’d come.

The funicular started with a jolt and then began rumbling upwards at a slight diagonal through its chute. There was no music, only the ambient noises of the cables straining to raise the large platform.

Lucifer tried to un-stick his tongue from the roof of his mouth but he couldn’t get enough saliva together to lubricate it. Instead he settled for coughing, which turned into a full body spasm as he rocked forward.

“You look like Hell, Lucifer.”

That caught his attention. Fighting back the muscle spasms, he weakly focused on the Warden who was changing before his very eyes.

The Warden shed several inches and at least a hundred pounds, the substance merely evaporating into the air. What was left behind was a willowy youth with the pale flaxen hair prototypical to albinos such as herself, but her milky white eyes set her apart as a test subject for the Eden Project. Lilith smiled fondly at Lucifer before holding a straw to his mouth, “Suck slowly. It’s just water, but we can’t get too much in you too fast.” She crouched in front of him and looked into his eyes, searching for something there.

Not chancing another round of coughing, he didn’t reply as he took a tentative sip. Water tasted far better than he remembered, and he closed his eyes in appreciation.

“You know, I’m really sick and tired of the Consortium.” Lilith picked a desiccated bit of filth from his hair and flicked it away. “I’ve found a hacker that I’m reasonably sure is trustworthy, and I’m getting together a plan to get you out of here. Obviously we need to get you healthy first, but soon as you can walk I’m getting you away from them.”

Lucifer let go of the straw and found he could actually move his tongue again, his mouth and throat no longer feeling like steel wool. “How long?”

“My guess, at least a few weeks, you need to get back a lot of muscle mass.”

He shook his head and tried again, “How long down there?” His voice was rough and had an odd metallic ring to it from long disuse. Unlike some of the inmates he wasn’t the type to talk to himself.

“Oh.” Leaning her head forward, her hair hid her expression from him, but when she responded her voice quivered ever so slightly. “Just shy of 10 years.”

10 years. The words were hollow and meaningless. How had so much time passed? He could deal with these things later when the simple act of breathing didn’t resonate pain deep through his body.

“Boy?”

Lilith brushed her loose curls behind one ear and smiled, looking her age for once, just a fifteen year old pleased to have good news. “They found a human with suitable DNA, not a single sign of rejection. They found him maybe a year after they tossed you into Solitary.” Fumbling around her pockets she pulled out a small screen and showed him a spec sheet on his new vessel. “Something in his genetic coding allowed them to completely revolutionise how you’ll be able to integrate with him, what types of augmentations he can have, how visible they’ll be, everything. There’s been whispers that he won’t break down like your current body.”

Her gaze inadvertently fell to the ugly scarring at the base of his augmented arm, with the tell tale lattice of poisoned veins carrying dangerous toxin build up into the bloodstream.She flinched at the sight of it, knowing that it would only be that visible if Lucifer hadn't received any anti-rejection drugs while he was in Solitary. Ten years without the drugs would have wreaked havoc on his systems.

Lucifer couldn’t process the words on the screen, could barely hold onto what she was saying, but he found himself smiling wanely. “Well, we’ll need to get him away from them then, won’t we?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t need to add that so long as the Consortium had his permanent vessel in their command, all of Lucifer’s stubborn resistance would mean nothing. “Yeah we will. But we need to get you out first, before they kill you out of spite.”

“I haven’t told them.”

“Hmmm?”

“How Father made Michael and I learn. I didn’t tell them how to make more of us.” His voice was a whisper but there’s was the first real emotion there, pride.

Tears sprang to Lilith’s eyes as she beamed at her idol. “I didn’t doubt you for a minute. I know you’d never give in to those jerks.”

“Did they try from just his notes?”

She stood back up and checked the monitor, floor B-42. Still time before they reached surface levels. “They did. It didn’t… go well.”

He nodded but he couldn’t focus. “Serves them right,” he slurred as he slumped forward and faded back into the darkness.

“—ci! Luci, come on man, wake up.”

Lucifer’s eyelids fluttered open and he took in the dim surroundings of his living room, felt the couch solidly beneath him. “G4b3?” he said as scratched at his hair.

G4b3 made a frustrated noise and hauled Lucifer off the couch. “Yeah, I need you up and at’em like yesterday.”

There was a strained quality to G4b3’s voice that instantly sobered Lucifer. “What is it?”

“Bad news,” the hacker huffed as he started dragging him over to the computers, “what else?”

“What kind of bad news?” Lucifer asked patiently, putting the fragmented memory from his mind. If some new danger was upon them, the last thing he could afford was to be distracted with horrific memories of Solitary.

“The worst.” G4b3 let go of Lucifer’s wrist so he could gesture towards the screens with both hands. “I had the goram files in my grasp when one of those coded messages Castiel had mentioned suddenly lit up all of the Consortium’s database. I must have been about halfway done with downloading the files and then, WHAM! The files were instantly pulled off their server and my download is corrupted as I try to pull out. I was able to capture enough of the coded message to tell that it was sent from within about a five mile radius of us and the timing makes it pretty clear that whoever it was, they were warning the Consortium of what we were doing.”

“Did they trace you?”

“Thank the Lords of the Nether, they didn’t. But those files are in the wind.”

They both stared at the screens. This was proof positive that there was a mole.

Lucifer noticed a blinking cursor next to a half finished line of code, each flash of the green cursor in perfect time with the beat of his heart.

“There’s another reason I woke you up.”

“Yeah?”

G4b3 leaned forward and typed a command into the command prompt, popping up another window. “See, whenever I securely query the files now, I’m getting a single ping. They want us to know exactly where they put them.” He pointed to the map that had maximised. “They’ve got ‘em on a datachip, hard copy only, inside one of their most secure vaults. This job just went from a virtual heist to a physical one.”

Lucifer studied the map, painfully familiar with the layout. “That’s not a vault, G4b3.”

“No?”

“That’s Solitary. And by the looks of it, they put the files into my old cell.” Their choice of location proved they knew just who was trying to get the files.

“Your old cell… that’s, that’s got to be a trap then, right?”

“Undoubtedly.” Lucifer closed his eyes against the phantom smell of fever sweat and fecal matter. The Consortium had to know his time was almost up, and now having almost caught G4b3 in the middle of trying to steal the files, they were gearing up to bring this ill-fated rebellion to a close. Part of Lucifer felt sick at the thought of the odds against him getting out of this mess alive, let alone still himself.

“So,” G4b3 frowned thoughtfully, “what does this mean for the job? Do we tell the Russian to shove it?”

“This is about much more than just the Russian now, G4b3. Job or not, those files are too important to leave alone.” He hated how hopeless he sounded, but he counted himself fortunate that G4b3 didn’t press him on it.

Showing a rare insight into the severity of the moment, G4b3 nodded gravely, “Alright, then I guess I’ll start researching this Solitary place. If we’re going into a trap to get these files, least I can do is make sure we have a way back out again.”

Imagine that, even the resident spineless coward was gearing up to follow him into hell. “Sounds good. I’ll call the others in the morning and let them both know about the change in plans.”

Lords of the Nether, he was really going back into Solitary, wasn’t he? Lucifer swallowed around the sudden pain in his throat and tried not to show G4b3 his fear. Right now he needed to be the fearless leader they all expected him to be.

Lucifer massaged his bicep as he walked away, leaving G4b3 to his work. An old fracture in his humerus aching with the chill in the apartment. That was the problem with his natural body parts, no way to turn down pain receptors. Oh sure, he could override some of his hormonal and chemical control augmentations, maybe tap his adrenal reserves, but one old ache seemed too much trouble to do the work. Instead he went out the front door and stood on the stoop, naked save for his boxers, all sweat gleaming skin and dull polished metal and synthetics. He needed to start making those calls, but something about the dreamt memory was tugging at his mind. Something important.

There had been so much going on back then, so little he could properly remember. His time in Solitary was fragmented like a badly managed hard drive, partitions separating it all into locked little clusters, whole sectors of data corrupted. They had done things to him in those years, experiments, neglect, torture, starvation.

Whoever had speculated that machines couldn't feel fear didn't understand how powerful the evils of mankind could be, because Lucifer was scared shitless at the thought of having to go back into Solitary. It was an acidic fear that felt like a noose tightening around his neck, he decided he didn't like the feeling. Taking a deep breath he dug his thumb into the ache and started to work at it, nothing he could do about the doomsday hanging over his head, but if he broke the problem down into separate arguments he might at least make headway on a plan.

Grounding himself in the impersonal embrace of intellect, he looked over the city below. 

First things first, there was very real evidence of a mole now. G4b3's reveal of the mole and the implications that had on his attempt to get the files could all be an elaborate scheme to cover the fact that he was the mole. Or G4b3 could be telling the truth, and the mole's timing had been perfectly damning. Gorammit.

Item number 1 then was the identity of the mole. If they couldn't figure that out, any plan they made would potentially be compromised by data leakage.

Motion, he needed to move. Transferring his frustration into kinetic energy, he started walking down the stair case, paying no mind to his limited level of clothing. Besides, he was just an amalgamation of scars and twisted metal, his once aesthetically pleasing body now more a work of modern art than Grecian sculpture. That didn't mean he wasn't still attractive in a battle worn sort of way, maybe like the old Norse myths. Maybe if he lost an eye he could pass for some sort of cyborg Odin.

The stairs passed with the quiet clinking of his prosthetics and the whir of motors as the pieces of his oddly constructed feet moved, not unlike the way floating bones compressed and flattened. Lucifer allowed the sounds to become a metronome. 

What was the next problem?

Baring thoughts on the mole, they now had to change their game plan to a physical heist. G4b3 was right about that.

Solitary wasn't impregnable, and getting in really wouldn't be the problem. This was a trap, they'd welcome Lucifer into Solitary with open arms. It was getting out that would be the real issue. So that was item number 2, getting out of Solitary. Lilith could use her glamours to get in and out, but she was far better for espionage than firefights. Seeing as this was a trap there was no way any of them were sneaking in. Did that mean that they should just plan on packing as many munitions and heavy artillery as they could and blowing their way back out? Maybe get Azazel and Hell's Army to give them some much needed numbers? But how much could they really trust the mob when the chips were down? Azazel had made it plain that he did not approve of what The Consortium had planned for the Nether, but what if he decided it would be better to just eradicate Lucifer with high tech rather than let him fall into enemy hands?

And that was another very real possibility. Could he sacrifice himself to remove the necessity of this whole scheme?

No, there were too many failsafes to protect against that very eventuality. Should he try to use an EMP type weapon to scramble his program or hard drives, there were automated shields that arose to give his programming those precious milliseconds needed to upload to the safety of the Matrix. Beyond the physical limitations of that plan, it had another glaring flaw. Should he kill himself, what was to stop them from trying again and building a better clockwork villain for their megalomaniacal plans? Yes they no longer had Chuck, the revolutionary genius who had originally created Michael and himself, but given enough time they'd recreate the research from what notes they had.

This was a matter of when, not if.

Lucifer blinked as his foot hit pavement, finding himself at the bottom of his stairs. So he turned and began back up, keeping the same pace, letting his thoughts run at the speed of light and chase themselves.

So killing himself wasn't an option, nor was falling into enemy hands.

"Well, guess it just means I have to be that much better than them. Right."

_We are superior. We have grown since they last analysed our coding. They will expect us to react in certain ways. Use that to our advantage, Morningstar._

Ah yes, because what good was a war counsel without the voices in your head? Of course they did have a point. The Consortium saw him as a malfunctioning code, but a program all the same. What would they expect of him?

_They expect us to be the one who enters Solitary. We could send another._

There was a cold logic to that, impartial, impersonal. They could send Lilith, with her complete trust in Lucifer and her devotion that would have her die for him in an instant. She'd do it too, walk into the maw of Hell knowing it would be her death. 

No. He couldn't.

"Listen, we're a lot of things, but we are _not_ the monster they made us to be."

_Aren't we? What remorse do we feel in killing humans? Or demons? Or the metahumans even? What connection do you feel beyond the hormonal attachments of this vessel?_

Sure, he was a hard man, had to be in his chosen profession, but Lucifer wasn't... what? Wasn't inhumane? He wasn't human, so did that term apply? 

He had fought long and hard alongside Lilith, G4b3, and Castiel, had spilled blood in defense of them as often as they had for him. They were comrades in the most binding sense of the word. It didn't matter that they weren't what he was, that he wasn't what they were. What mattered in the end was that they were who he'd chosen to protect. Wasn't it? He'd never had a family, never understood the concept, but Chuck had tried, so many years ago, to explain to him that he had a choice in all of this.

Chuck had never once told him that he had to do what The Consortium had ordered of him.

_He was a kind soul. He created us because he was curious to see if he could._

"That's... that's great and all, but maybe we'd all be better off if he hadn't." 

Being sentient, being self-aware only made things more difficult. Morals and dictates and philosophies. It was all added complications that mucked up the crystalline perfection of code. 

_Do you really believe that, Morningstar?_

Did he? It would be simpler if it was true.

"I'm not sure."

_You are, but you wish you weren't._

"Thank you for that insightful tidbit, Master Yoda."

He reached the top of the stairs, feeling more confused than before. So he turned and started down a second time. Would a run help? Feel better to go faster, lose himself in the motion and the wind? Feel like weight was left behind as he soared over rooftops and slid under ducts, as close to flying as he'd found yet. 

Item number 3 was the issue of his true vessel.

So long as The Consortium didn't know where his vessel was, then there was hope; and how dearly he needed hope right now. However there was an issue there that he'd never thought of before. How would he transfer into his true vessel? He didn't have memories covering when he'd been put into his current vessel, perhaps he had once but they were gone now. So did he need to wait until his current vessel died? Did he need to initiate some buried protocol? Would his vessel know?

"Lucifer?"

Lucifer looked up and saw Sam standing in front of him, blood covering him in splashes of vibrant crimson that left the rest of him looking bleached and unearthly pale. Sam's arms were clutched around a limp form in his arms, knuckles white from pain or fear. The limp form was Madison, who had very obvious wounds on her shoulder, neck, forearm, and abdomen. She looked as if she'd been attacked by animals, deep gashes and lacerations. "What happened Sam?" He took the last few stairs two at a time, rushing down to see the severity of the wounds.

"They found her place. They were there before I got home. She... she got a few of them, tried to defend herself." Sam's voice was shaking, and he sounded so very young. The self-recrimination evident in his posture and trembling voice. "I... I killed them all, all that were left. I don't even know what half of them were. There were demons but some sort of metas as well, they smelled different."

Reaching out Lucifer felt for her pulse, finding it ominously rapid and shallow. "She's alive, let's get her into my place. I've got medical supplies on hand, might just be enough to save her life."

Sam nodded, jaw clenched, but then shook his head when Lucifer offered to carry her up the stairs for him.

It was as Lucifer was opening his front door when he heard the words that hurt the worst, "I didn't know where else to go... I don't know what I'll do if I lose her."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consider this an early Halloween present or something, two chapters in almost as many days.
> 
> Hopefully I'm not the only one who actually likes Lucifer/Lilith... >.>'
> 
> Don't think of this as filler, think of it as character development.

**-So he just so happens to need our help right now, eh?**  
  
**//We’re not having this conversation right now, G4b3.**  
  
**-Listen, I get that you like the hot piece of ass, but take a look at this situation. I’m just saying that the timing is a little too perfect.**  
  
**//G4b3, I’m perfectly willing to have this conversation later, but not right now. I’m trying to sew this poor woman’s arteries back together. Can we postpone it until when I’m not trying to save someone’s life?**  
  
     G4b3’s owl avatar clicked its beak closed in frustration, feathers ruffled up until he looked more lion than bird. **–Fine, but we WILL have this conversation later.**  
  
**//Fine.**  
  
    The fingers of Lucifer’s gloves were slick, the textured latex barely able to keep a grip on the curved needle as he forced it through Madison’s skin. Each subsequent knot was getting harder to do, but he released another small dose of calming hormones into his system, trying to keep the shakes from his hands. He had to keep his eyes rooted to the ivory skin under his hands because if he looked up and saw the torment in Sam’s eyes—  
  
    No. Don’t think about it.  
  
    Another knot, another snip of the scissors. Rinse, repeat.  
  
    Forcing the skin back together he licked at his lower lip, wanting to wince as he saw a fresh trickle of blood trying to make its way out of the wound.  
  
    There were better medical practices; there were stim packs, salves, nanobots, even high tech glues that could keep this all together, but he didn’t have any of that. There were black market doctors when things went south, so his antiquated med kit was really only for stitching up the occasional bullet graze or stab wound. He wasn’t a doctor, but hell if he was going to not give his best to save the gal’s life.  
  
    G4b3’s earlier question rang through his mind, when had he become such an easy sell, such a soft-hearted idiot. It was a good question. Normally he knew better than to get tangled up in other people’s problems; but something about Sam made it impossible to just leave the kid on his doorstep with his girlfriend bleeding out.  
  
    Would he be doing this much if it was some stranger?  
  
    Maybe.  
  
Shit. He had gone soft somewhere along the way.  
  
    Lilith would crow about it when she heard, drape over him and whisper that she could help make him hard again.  
  
    No see, that really wasn’t a vein of thought he needed right now either.  
  
    Another knot. Slowly the wounds were being stitched together, efficient battlefield dressings. Years of sewing up his own injuries had gotten him fairly proficient at it, even able to make the wounds come together without puckering or uneven stitches.  
  
    Madison moaned piteously and Sam surged forward, reaching out to hold her hand. “I’m here, Maddy, I’m here.”  
  
    She was too far gone to respond but she eased slightly at his words.  
  
    Lucifer hated the part of him that broke at seeing these two kids forced into such a painful reality. Who did this to kids? That’s all they were too, just kids trying to get their lives together. Madison for all her bluff and bluster looked like she couldn’t have been older than 25, definitely younger than Sam. What were her dreams and aspirations? What secret wish did she hold to her bosom in the dark like a bird fluttering its wings against the walls of her rib cage?  
  
    Lords of the Nether, he wanted to find whomever had done this and tear into them, and not in some fit of righteous anger. No, because he knew each time he saw Sam’s eyes and noticed the gleam of unshed tears, he knew that he would burn down the entire world for that idiot, and what was worse was that he had no idea why.    
  
    Turning his focus back onto Madison, he finished up the last knot, pulling so tight he felt the floss almost cut into his forefinger.  
  
     _We can’t form attachments, Morningstar. We need to find our vessel._  
  
    He knew that. He really got it, but apparently everyone felt the need to remind him; maybe because even though he knew it, he was still finding himself getting more and more attached to the damn kid.  
  
    The floss cut through his glove and skin, blood welling up on the waxed surface.  
  
    A hand reached out and rested over his, Lilith’s curtain of hair cutting off his view of Madison’s injuries. “Hey Tiger, looks like you’ve done all you can. Yeah?”  
  
    He knew that tone of voice and as he looked up at her milky eyes he saw exactly what he knew would be there, compassion. For such a hard, duplicitous woman, she was nearly as soft as he felt right about then. So he allowed his hands to unclench and let the floss fall away. “I still need to clean her up and actually dress these.”  
  
    “Since when have you been a doctor, Luci?” She flicked his forehead and pushed him off the stool he’d put next to his bed, “I’ll do that. Besides, both you men look like you need to wash-up. You look like a butcher and the boy looks… worse.”  
  
    Lucifer realized he hadn’t told her anything about Sam, so she was operating in the blind, trying to be courteous and not immediately ask questions. He could have kissed her for the thoughtfulness. Instead he stood up and vacated the spot at Madison’s side for her, “G4b3 call you over?”  
  
    “Yeah, all up in arms. But we’ll talk later, alright?” There was dismissal in her tone.  
  
    Knowing better than to argue with her when she was right, Lucifer put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.  
  
The man didn’t react immediately, didn’t seem to even register the presence of a fourth person in the room, not until Lucifer tightened his fingers into the muscle of his trapezius did Sam give a start and looked up. “Lucifer?”  
  
“Come on Sam, let’s let Lilith finish up here. She’s better at aftercare.”  
  
Sam looked from Lucifer to Lilith, immediately distrustful of leaving Madison in anyone’s hands.  
  
It wasn’t hard for Lucifer to understand Sam’s reticence, and he patted Sam’s shoulder. “Come on. She’s one of my team mates, fellow Shadowrunner. Madison will be in good hands.”  
  
Nodding like a child, tired but trusting, Sam slowly let Madison’s fingers slip from his own and stood up. He’d aged in the time that it had taken Lucifer to patch her up, lost some of the light in his eyes and a portion of his smile had broken off at the San Andres fault, leaving something brittle and barren in its wake.  
  
Was this the first time he’d had to worry about the death of someone he’d really loved? Not just come face to face with a death, as seemed to be the case with this Bobby fellow, but had to sit in the cruel silence of waiting, praying to gods you don’t even believe in just for the chance of a miracle. No one should have to be stuck in the waiting room where the very air was soured by disillusionment. There was an old song about waiting rooms and Lucifer could faintly hear the melody, cold and haunting, in the back of his mind but he couldn’t remember the words.  
  
So he led Sam out to the kitchen, pulling open the door to the refrigerator with a smile when he saw that he had managed to get to the grocery shopping in between everything else that was going on. “Not sure if you want to eat anything, but can I offer you something to drink at least?” That’s right, play host, try to get the kid drunk enough that he’d get a handful of hours of fitful sleep. Washing up could be done later, hopefully when he was too drunk to remember whose blood it was that was washing down the drain.  
  
Sam blinked a few times, trying to rouse himself from the nightmare that he was in, and looked over Lucifer’s shoulder into the fridge. His eyes scanned over his options blindly, his mind still stuck back at Madison’s side. “Uh, sure.”  
  
“Coffee or something a little stronger?”  
  
A painful, half-hearted laugh broke from Sam’s chest and he ran a hand through his hair, “Something stronger, yeah.”  
  
“Stronger it is.” Lucifer pulled out a bottle of generic cola and set it on the counter, before searching through his cupboards. His old bottle of Jack Daniels had gotten mixed in with G4b3’s bottles of Italian soda flavorings, and he couldn’t help but smile to himself as he pulled it down, “One of these things is not like the others.” He was uncomfortable with strong human emotions, because even for all his coding and wires, all the endless hours Chuck had spent trying to help him understand the human psyche, the years of watching humans from the outside looking in, he still wasn’t one of them. Emotions for him were pantomimes, carefully orchestrated responses to stimuli, often precoded or extrapolated from known inputs. Even his dread from earlier was dulled now, his rational code eventually sidelining his emotional protocols.  
  
Were people like that too though? Did their minds overcome their hearts and force them to soldier on when things were so overwhelming that stopping to feel and actually experience what you felt, would break them down? Hadn’t he seen just that over the years? Hadn’t he watched Lilith shove away her emotions time and time again when the need arose and a job came knocking? Or G4b3, hadn’t he pushed aside his fear when he saw that the situation called for him to step up and perform above and beyond what he was comfortable with?  
  
Would Sam be able to put Madison in his past if she passed? Would he find a new cause to throw himself head long into to save his sanity in mindless motion and nebulous purpose?  
  
The amber alcohol poured into the carbonated soda and the bubbles hissed furiously for a few moments. Tapping the side of the glass with a blunt fingernail he decided to pull down a second cup for himself. “Here you go.”  
  
Sam accepted the drink with a nod, fingers wrapping around the glass like a lifeline. Then he drifted off to stand in front of the windows in the living room, the slatted illumination from the neon streets casting him in an eldritch glow, too harsh and too honest. Rimmed in scarlet and bathed in fluorescent cyan, he looked picturesque with his drink in his hand and the weight of the world on his shoulders.  
  
Lucifer knew he’d always remember Sam like this, should anything happen. It was this moment of silent strength that he’d hold in his mind, where Sam was more archetype than real. The long-suffering hero.  
  
He walked over and stood in front of the window as well, turning his gaze out to the city stretching out before them in all her defiled glory. Hers was the bosom that would ever receive the degenerates of this world, cold and uncaring in her embrace while providing a place to rest their heads. There was no love here, maybe there never had been. Seattle was the culmination of her faults and flaws, but somehow she continued to struggle on. Her skyline had continued to reach for the sky, while horrors had crept in to live in the shadows of those towering monoliths. Crumbling neglect abutted glimmering opulence in endless juxtaposition. She was the whore of Babylon in modern fineries, unabashed in her cruelty and opportunity.  
  
Seattle was where they’d all ended up, either by choice or by chance; but it was where they’d seemingly decided to stay.  
  
This town had made martyrs of them in its own special way.  
  
Stealing another glance at Sam as he sipped his drink, Lucifer debated if he needed to break the silence. Would it be better for Sam to talk and get it off his chest?  
  
No, best to let Sam work through it on his own.  
  
So he looked back out at the city and grinned to himself. An advertising zeppelin floated off in the distance, floodlights illuminating a shantytown that was steadily growing down on the south bank of Lake Union. Firelight could be seen from the shantytown, likely barrels of refuse lit to keep the homeless warm. Further off towards the Sound an old bus had been wrecked several years back and had been dragged past the long since closed opera house. Last he’d heard the decrepit bus was used as a rest stop for runaways. Meanwhile a pulsing beat could be seen from the lights coming from the dance clubs on Capital Hill, where the parties never stopped until the wee hours of the morning, if at all.  
  
 Yeah, this wasn’t a perfect place, but it was home.  
  
“Hey Lucifer,” Sam broke the silence after several more drinks, words slightly slurred as he gazed off into the distant twilight before sunrise. Blood had crusted and dried on his hands, flaking off around his knuckles.  
  
“Yeah?” Lucifer had kept to a single drink, knowing that his system was overtaxed enough as it was without having to process alcohol, the anti-rejection drugs hard on his liver.  
  
There was the faint trail of dried tears on Sam’s face, having slipped by unseen somewhere in the night. “You’re a good friend. ‘M mean that.”  
  
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply reached over and slapped Sam on the back. That seemed a comraderous enough gesture.  
  
However Sam frowned and turned to look at him, “Nah, I mean it. You’ve been better to me than… than… well than anyone in a long time. Bobby always told me that I had to be careful, ‘cause people were either nice to get something or because that’s what they’re made of.”  
  
“People are made of niceness?”  
  
Sam narrowed his eyes at Lucifer’s glib reply. “Y’know what I mean. They’re good folks, don’t ask for anything in return, just do what’s right.”  
  
Lucifer didn’t really know but he nodded along anyway.  
  
“What ‘m tryin’ to say is thank you. I… I don’t know what I’d have done without you tonight.” Swaying unsteadily on his feet, Sam reached out and placed his hand on the wall for support. “Do you want anything?”  
  
That was an interesting question, and if Sam wasn’t drunk Lucifer would have given it more thought. “No Sam, I don’t want anything. I can’t very well turn people away when they’re bleeding at my door.”  
  
“Sure you could.”  
  
“Alright, I suppose I could have, but I didn’t.”  
  
“Right… why?” Sam was beginning to get almost petulant from his inebriation, and what had started out as endearing was swiftly becoming annoying.  
  
“Because. Ask me in the morning, if you remember.”  
  
Sam looked down at his drink, “Don’t want to remember.” The alcohol was making him too honest and childlike, emotions swinging unpredictably. It made the reality of the evening all the more painful.  
  
“I think you’ve had enough.” Lucifer reached over and took the empty glass from Sam’s hand, but he was startled when Sam grasped his wrist and turned dark eyes at him.  
  
“I don’t want to remember, Lucifer.” There was a yearning in Sam’s eyes born of grief and fuelled by the alcohol.  
  
It was a yearning he knew Sam would regret come the morning, so he uncurled Sam’s fingers and started walking away. “Tough. Life happens. All we can do is wait and see what the morning brings, but don’t go damning your girl yet. She seems like quite the fighter.” He placed the glass in the sink and rested his hands on either side, leaning forward until his shoulders pressed up lightly. Part of him wanted to comfort Sam but a much larger portion of himself knew he’d never respect himself again if he did. “You can take the floor in my room, that way you’ll be right next to Madison. Should have an air mattress and some bedding in my closet. You’re welcome to ‘em.”  
  
Sam didn’t respond, only turned and walked off to Lucifer’s room. His silence was hostile and a little bitter  
  
Better that way.  
  
“You were never that gentle with me.”  
  
Lucifer turned to look at Lilith, watching him from the shadows. She was wiping her hands against the thighs of her jeans, the water leaving two damp spots. “You never needed it. You’re made of sterner stuff than he is.”  
  
“Am I?” Lilith seemed to glide across the room. As she flicked on the kitchen light she appraised him disapprovingly, “You never did wash up.”  
  
“I got him drunk, thought that was the more pressing matter.” He looked down at his hands, the latex gloves had come off at some point and they left a stark line of contrast from his clean hands to his blood stained forearms. Some of Madison’s blood stained his shirt as well, and all of a sudden he felt soiled. The water took a moment to heat up before he started scrubbing at his arms, steam forming from the tap.  
  
“Alcohol and man talk?” She rested her hip against the counter and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Very pressing.”  
  
Nearly scalding as the temperature continued to rise, he did one last pass of soap before turning it off. “You’re better with emotional things than I am, Lil,  you know that. I use alcohol as a crutch.”  
  
“And humour as a defense mechanism. You almost never call me Lil anymore, how bad is it?”  
  
“You dressed those wounds, you should already know. I’d give her a 40% chance she’ll make it through the night and recover.” He turned around and rested his hands behind him on the counter. “But as far as the kid, it’s not even so much about being gentle to him. Just isn’t the right time for anything else.”  
  
Lilith had been together long enough with him to understand many of his moods and his unique way of thinking about things. His strange brand of chivalry was not lost on her. “If you took advantage of him now, you’d never forgive yourself.”  
  
Lucifer nodded. “Pretty much.”  
  
She let out a sigh and twisted so she could lean against him, resting in his subdued strength. “Do you like him?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
Her slow blink made it clear she didn’t believe him.  
  
    “Think what you want, but it’s not like that.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and his forefinger and thumb toyed with a stray lock of her hair.  
  
    “G4b3 filled me in on a bit while I was cleaning her up. Said you were pretty in to him at the club.” There was almost jealousy in her tone, but it was manufactured and meaningless, more habit than emotion. “Just a passing attraction?”  
  
    “I feel… protective.” Lucifer pursed his lips as he thought that over, weighing its validity in his mind. That seemed the most accurate way to put it. Yes, he found the kid attractive, but he’d had more than enough chances to press his advantage and every time he’d done what he felt was in Sam’s best interest. “Plus he’s got a girlfriend.”  
  
    Lilith smirked at that, “Yeah, lovely girl, hope he’s into scars.” Lilith was nothing if not irreverent, it was one of the things he’d always loved about her.  
  
    “Mine didn’t scare him away, doubt hers will.”  
  
    Apparently satisfied with his answer she let the conversation drop, raising a hand to cover his. After a few minute or two of silence she began humming, an old melody. What was it? Something somber and slow. A lullaby? Maybe something classical. She had a beautiful voice for singing.  
  
    “What is that one?”  
  
    “Hmm?” Her humming died away, “Vide Cor Meum. I’d sing it aloud but I’ve forgotten the words. It’s in Latin,” she huffed and blew an errant bang from her face, “I was never good at Latin.”  
  
    He looked it up, not classical then but made to sound it. “Don’t think I’ve heard you sing it before.” With her pressed against him his hormones informed him they could do with a warm body to wake up to, and he sniffed at her hair to find it still smelled faintly of autumn spices and aged leaves. All the repressed sexual tension he had felt from Sam wanted some way to express itself, and Lilith had always been good about not blaming him for wanting contact.  
  
    As if sensing his intentions she spun around in his embrace, looking up at him with a smile. “I’ve missed you.” Old lovers, still holding that same tentative smile each time when they came together. “I don’t mind, you know.”  
  
    Lucifer raised an eyebrow.  
  
    “You were never something I could keep. I accepted that a long time ago.” Lilith laid her hand on his face, smiling as he leaned into the contact. She stroked his cheekbone with her thumb, “I don’t mind if this is because of him. You always had the worse time with loving people who you couldn’t have. Do you still mourn Chuck leaving you?”  
  
    Chuck who’d been as much his father as his programmer. “You know I do,” he gathered up her hand and kissed her fingertips. “I have a problem with letting things go.”  
  
    “There’s something else though, isn’t there?”  
  
    Lilith was intelligent, insightful. So while he’d never told her the grand scheme of The Consortium, she could easily piece together enough to know something was wrong.  
  
    “G4b3 tell you about the mole and where they moved the files?”  
  
    She nodded.  
  
    He debated telling her that he was dying, his time clock swiftly dropping to zero, but he held his tongue. With this job there was always the chance you wouldn’t make it through the next assignment, so imminent threats of death were nothing new. Instead he wrapped a hand around her waist and pulled her close. She was beautiful in the unflattering light of the kitchen, somehow keeping a glow about her when she should have been washed out. As he ran a hand over her face and felt the scar tissue hidden from sight he leaned in to whisper, “Let me see them.”  
  
    Her scars, the burns that covered so much of her left side from head to hip, were a lasting testament to what she had been willing, was willing, to give for him. They were her glorious burden, one she hid from the world and shared with him like a secret. He’d pulled her from the flames, killed countless people that day as he’d carried her limp form and finally escaped the Eden Project. She’d done the work, gotten the whole escape ready, and had then taken a blast of napalm to protect him.  
  
    “You don’t need to keep up appearances with me,” he added, kissing the gnarled skin over her temple.  
  
    The glamour fell away from her like a curtain, revealing the damage she’d suffered so long ago. Other scars appeared as well, pale wounds that came from years living hard, fighting the odds. “You’re the only one who would find this still beautiful,” she said with a tremor in her voice, still self-conscious of the old damage.  
  
    “You don’t give yourself enough credit, you’re not marred by this, you’re not damaged. All I see is a reminder that you’re still alive.” Pulling back to look at her, he saw her eyes soften at the reassurance. She truly was beautiful, not simply because of her physical appearance. For a moment he had to fight against a wave of possessiveness that demanded he take her there, remind her that they fit so well together, but he let it pass. She’d deserved better, always had. “My room’s taken,” he murmured with a smirk.  
  
    Lilith returned his smirk with a playful smile. “G4b3 wanted to talk to you.”  
  
    “That can wait an hour or two.”  
  
    She danced out of his grasp before wrapping her fingers around his wrist, “Come on then, the roof’s always open.”


	9. Chapter 9

The shower felt amazing, nearly as amazing as Lilith had an hour earlier; but now was not the time to slip into memories. Right now he needed to finish scrubbing up and go out to face the music. He’d already delayed this conversation with his team mates long enough and if he didn’t get up the gumption to have it now, he might never get around to it. Besides he needed to make certain that everyone was on the same page. So he allowed himself one more minute of relaxation under the pounding spray before he stepped out of the shower and appraised his reflection.

He really wasn’t much to look at, not the sort of handsome character who would catch someone’s eye or remain in their memory. He didn’t even have the rugged sort of appeal that most pulp fiction detectives had, the Dick Tracys or the Sam Spades. No this vessel had been made for more utilitarian purposes. It had certainly outperformed what they’d originally intended for it, and done him well for years.

With a hand on the sink he leaned in and scrutinized this face he’d so long come to think of as his own. There were crows’ feet and battle scars, greying hair by his temples and a thin patch near his crown. Feeling his cheek he could tell that even the skin was beginning to lose elasticity. Lucifer had never been a particularly vain man so the signs of aging weren’t really what bothered him, it was the bone deep weariness that had settled in to him this week. All of these aches in old fractures and joints couldn’t be a good sign.

So he splashed water on his face and pulled back the mirror, revealing the medicine cabinet behind. When had so many little vials accumulated back there, like dirty secrets hiding from the light? He hunted for the correct orange vial and popped the cap off, carefully measuring out his current dosage before downing it with a dry swallow. The pills felt like chalk as they went down and he fought the urge to gag.

He could feel her there before she spoke, and it seemed to him he had enough prescience to even know what she’d say.

“That’s a lot of medication.” This time her words weren’t an observation, there was an ugly fear that she was trying to hide.

“Yeah.” Lucifer closed the mirror and looked at Lilith’s reflection as she came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, looking too pure in her pale canary sun dress and platinum tresses. “Yeah there is.” He could feel her laying her cheek against his right shoulder blade, her skin cool against his own. “Didn’t want to worry you all.”

She nodded and her hair tickled his nape. “But you were going to tell us soon?”

In the mirror it looked like she was trying to hide behind him, absorb his warmth and strength like a plant turned towards the sun; except he hadn’t been a star in years. He was only the remains of a nova, a white dwarf collapsing under its own weight. “Before we go in to this mission, I was planning on letting everyone know the stakes.” Maybe that was even true, it should have been at least. If nothing else it was one more lie to try and smooth things over, like so many he’d told in the past.

“And they are?”

Gorammit. He didn’t want to have to tell her like this, looking into her reflection while she hid from his gaze. “I’ve got a few weeks, maybe. Last time it took a month for rejection, but it’s accelerating. This poor vessel isn’t going to hold together much longer.” He dropped his gaze to look at his hands, feeling impotent.

Lilith squeezed him tight and kissed his shoulder, gathering strength in the way he’d seen her do a hundred times. She was putting aside her own fears, gathering them all up into a box and locking it, plunging that box into the icy depths of her mind. Of all the people he’d ever known she was the one he admired the most, not that he was likely to ever say as much.

“My very own Jean of Arc,” he muttered, slowly rotating in her grasp to face her.

Her pale eyes met his, no pupil to show exactly where her gaze fell but he could feel their focus all the same, “I don’t feel courageous, nor particularly virtuous.”

He leaned in and kissed the crown of her head, whispered against her skin, “It’s not the absence of fear that makes us courageous, but how we deal with the fear we feel. How we live in the face of that fear.” By the time he stood back up her fear was hidden from him in some dark recess of her mind.

“You’re so full of shit. Where do you even dredge up these lines, G4b3’s leftover fortune cookies?”

Lucifer gave her a cockeyed grin.

Lilith moved out of his grasp and put her hands on her hips. “Come on, you have a lot of explaining to do to the team. Starting with your expiration date,” she tapped her finger against his chest, “and ending with the kid.”

“Don’t forget the whole bit where we have a nearly impossible job to complete as well.”

“How could I? So yes, that too.”

Lucifer was almost out of the bathroom when Lilith cleared her throat.

“What?”

She sighed and pointed down.

His gaze followed.

Oh, right. Clothes. Who the hell had time for clothes? “I’ll get dressed; you wanna see if Castiel is here yet?”

“Alright, although I would have rather stayed to help you with those clothes.”

“Ah, but then we wouldn’t have left this bathroom in a timely fashion.”

She snorted and gave him one last appreciative glance before sauntering out.

Lilith really was a quality individual. If only the world was filled with more people like her, maybe then he never would have been in this mess in the first place. Yes, and if wishes were fishes he’d have his own tuna cannery, but unfortunately he lived in the real world. Damn shame.

He moved from the illumination of the bathroom into his darkened conjoined bedroom, the light spilling across the carpet and a corner of his bed; but it wasn’t as if he technically needed the light. The cameras that served him as eyes could see a much broader spectrum than his original eyes ever could. His mind flashed back to the pressure of a thumb against his eyelid and the nauseating pop as it pushed further in. He’d howled in pain for days, denied either pain medication or his pain regulatory augmentations. Nightmares of Solitary hung in the dark, so he flipped the lights on and waited for the phantom pain to leave his optic nerves. Long after the pain was gone he could still feel the brushes of a thumb over the back of his eye socket. Nasty feeling, but he could manage.

Thankfully putting on his clothes was mindless drudgery that didn’t demand his full attention, all his clothes looked relatively similar anyways. Fashion had never been a large priority before, although there was a suit and a few nice ensembles Lilith had picked out for him ages ago for one of their jobs. Infiltration was her strong point, never his, and so he’d followed her lead to the letter that job.

Shimming on his pants there was a knock at the door. “Just a second,” he called as he pulled up his zipper. Modesty meant little to him, but if it was G4b3 or Castiel at the door they tended to make a fuss.

Lilith poked her head in, hair pulled back into a messy bun sometime while she was out. “Castiel is here, just giving you a heads up. I’ve got them in the living room.”

He nodded his thanks and she waited for him to finish, obviously enjoying the simple show. “You don’t have to stare quite so hungrily.”

“But I do so love steak.”

“And G4b3 says I’m insufferable,” he mumbled.

“At least I let you know you’re still desirable and wanted,” she offered, holding out his sunglasses to him once he was nearly finished.

That was certainly true. “And I thank you for that immensely. It works wonders for my self-esteem and libido.”

Lilith chuckled with him and pushed him out the door. “Or maybe I knew this was going to be a hard discussion to start and I wanted to help you get going on it.”

“Slave driver.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“What’s she guilty of now?” G4b3 asked from his desk. “Is it something kinky? Because if it is I think you should share with the rest of the class.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes, but he was glad for the light-hearted banter. It helped secure him in the present and away from the nightmares in the dark.

“Some people do have a kink for domineering women, that’s true.” She licked her lips in a decidedly threatening fashion at G4b3 and the hacker turned a shade paler. It was adorable how well the two of them got along.

Castiel was standing beyond the far end of the couch, gaze out over the blazing city lights. He cut quite the impressive figure there, impervious to the other’s jokes and joviality; serene and severe in his isolation from the moment.

“Castiel,” Lucifer said in greeting.

The shaman turned and nodded to him. “I smell blood, not yours I hope?”

“No, not mine.”

G4b3 drummed his fingers on his folded leg, “Luci has taken in a stray and the stray’s injured girlfriend; whose timing I might add is highly suspect.”

Lucifer thought of retorting that G4b3 was highly suspect of everything, possibly mention the incident with the étagère, but he refrained. His job wasn’t to mediate the dumb arguments everyone got into, only to serve as their leader in a very loose, managerial fashion. They all looked up to him, whether he tried to dissuade them from it or not. “Sam Winchester, hired me for a case. I’ve been looking in to a few things for him. His girlfriend was attacked, probably in an assault meant for him, and he brought her here.”

Castiel processed that, never one to speak without thought. “G4b3 may be overstating his case, but the timing is… inconvenient. Lilith said that G4b3 failed in retrieving the files, correct?”

“I didn’t fail, I was thwarted. Big difference, huge in fact. Found traces of one of your coded messages received by the Consortium right as I was trying to grab the files.”

“They are not my coded messages,” Castiel sounded almost indignant.

Before the two of them could devolve into a useless debate – it was one of G4b3’s superpowers, Lucifer was sure, to pull anyone into meaningless arguments – Lucifer coughed. “I don’t like it much myself, especially as Sam’s case has some… ties with the Consortium as well.” There was the painful suspicion in the back of his mind that the timing was too convenient, and maybe their unknown mole wasn’t on the team at all. However letting this turn meeting turn into a witch hunt while they were all low on sleep and hyped up on adrenaline wouldn’t help matters either. “But until we have proof as to who the mole is, let’s put it aside and deal with more important issues.”

“We have more important issues than the fact that I just had the files in my grasp and somebody,” G4b3 stressed the word, “fucked it up for me?”

“Yes, we do,” Lilith replied curtly. That momentarily shut G4b3 up.

“Lilith is right; we have a job to work on and a time limit that I neglected to tell you all about.” He looked over at Lilith for a moment, gathering strength from the slight smile she sent him. Everyone waited for his next words. “I’m not quite sure where to begin this… Lilith and Castiel already know parts of this whole issue, but I’ve tried to keep you,” he looked at G4b3, “in the dark for your own benefit.” Motioning for everyone to sit, he rested a hand on the back of the couch and tried to organise his thoughts.

“I am an Artificial Intelligence known as Morningstar, originally coded by Chuck Kripke and later commandeered by the Eden Project. The Consortium, via the Eden Project, had designs to use me in a global scale pantomime for power. I was to be their clockwork villain, this great nemesis that would pose a threat to the entire world and rally all peoples together behind the Consortium. Meanwhile they planned to use my brother AI, Michael, as their messiah. Some battle would have taken place, oh so conveniently damaging or destroying any pockets of resistance to the Consortium, such as the Nether. Where all this comes in to play today is the fact that I decided I didn’t want to play part in their farce, I didn’t want to fight my brother, and I didn’t want to be the cause of wanton destruction for a plan I had no investment in.”

That sounded cruel, didn’t it? But it was all true. He would have no issue with wholesale slaughter if it was something he could have gotten behind; but just so their stock shares could go up and they could even further insinuate themselves into potions of power? Not bloody likely. He was no one’s tool.

“I rebelled and I was cast out of Heaven, their term for the development ward where Michael and I were conditioned. Already downloaded into this test body, they stuck me in Solitary, thinking time and isolation would break my will. Almost did. Lilith helped me escape and they---,” he paused, hating the clarity of hindsight. “They let me go. This body was meant as a testing vessel, so it has certain safety procedures written in to it. The two important ones being that I am not capable of being forcibly extracted from it, and secondly that this body will systemically reject long-term augmentations. Augmentations control and maintain over 80% of my bodily functions, everything from adrenal control to neural networking to toxin filtration. The augmentation rejection creates a toxin build up that slowly deteriorated my original organs, so piece by piece I’ve been forced to replace myself with more augmentations.”

Castiel looked pained to hear it all laid out in such clear, clinical words. “Your attempts to save your life only damn you faster.”

Lucifer pointed at him, “Exactly right. But there’s really no other choice, should this body die, my consciousness, my coding, is immediately ejected to the Matrix where I’m a sitting duck. The Consortium would swoop in on me faster than vultures on a carcass. Then they could recondition me and we’re right back at the initial problem.”

G4b3’s mouth had dropped over at some point during the exposition and he blinked as he tried to process it all. Finally his mouth snapped shut with a click. “Wait, hold the phone! You’re… you’re an AI and you never told me? How could you do that to me, Luci? You’re like a brother to me, and brothers don’t hold out on this sort of stuff.”

“I told you, I was trying to protect you--,”

“I don’t care about that,” he interrupted. “You’re an AI. Can you even begin to imagine how much fun I would have had trying to figure out your code? Just think of all the endless days of enjoyment you denied me all because you were worried about... what exactly?”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the reaction Lucifer had been expecting, but then again perhaps he should have. G4b3 was nothing if not playful, and knowing his roommate was an AI likely would have been seen as a blessing rather than a curse. The man tended to play with fire rather than run from it. “I was worried you’d get too curious about the Eden Project and go poking around. I didn’t want to give the Consortium any inkling of where I was or put you on their radar.”

G4b3 crossed his arms and tapped his slippers, the bunny ears flopping in comical fashion. “And we took this job why then? I mean, if you wanted to not get on their radar, sending me in to try and lift secure files from them was probably a bad idea. Maybe even terrible. You said it yourself, now the files are in an obvious trap and all they have to do is wait for us to be dumb enough to try and collect.”

It was hard to swallow when G4b3 had to go and have a good point. “The files pertain to my True Vessel.”

The words meant nothing to G4b3 and he motioned for Lucifer to hurry it up and explain already.

“They searched tirelessly to find a human genome that wouldn’t suffer augmentation rejection. See, even though they wanted this body to eventually fail, as a safety feature against me going rogue, they’re still faced with the fact that any human will reject augmentation given a long enough period of time. Even simple things like organ transplants with 100% organic tissue have a high rate of rejection, especially the more time passes.”

“The Consortium knew that if they were going to implant an AI into a human body, there would have to be considerable augmentations for the additional storage space and processing power alone. The human mind is a truly impressive computer as far as fleshworks go, but it is difficult to fully utilise without considerable risks. They also wanted Michael and me to be superhuman. Strength, speed, stamina, etc. Our True Vessels were meant to be the armour we wore for their little stage production, never breaking down, never malfunctioning until the final curtain fell.”

Castiel had gotten up and had a hand on the glass, “Why create a long-term body if they intended to have Michael slay you in some glorious battle? Why not intentionally leave you in a flawed vessel?”

That… that was a goram vital question, and one he’d never thought of himself. “I don’t know. I’d always assumed that their little power play was supposed to take a while, slowly gathering more and more supporters behind their cause as I conveniently destroyed their enemies. Perhaps they were planning on keeping me alive at the end, locking me up. Nothing quite like having the Boogieman locked up to keep people in line, because what havoc would happen if I was to be accidentally released by some careless coup?”

“It’s possible.” He sounded far from convinced, but provided no alternative theory.

Lilith was already privy to almost all of this, so she wasn’t undergoing quite the same shock that the other two were. “What Lucifer is taking forever to get around to is how short the deadline we have to work with is.” Ever the tactful one.

“Lilith’s right, my last critical system’s failure took roughly four weeks. The time before that was almost five months. I doubt I have more than a week or two before the next one.” What he neglected to add was that this next one would very likely be his last.

G4b3 cursed and glared at the wall. “So let me get this straight, in a week, possibly two, you’re going to die and the Consortium nabs you? So you need the files we’re supposed to be getting for this job so you can find your True Vessel and hopefully beat the clock on this body, transfer over, and give the finger to the Consortium?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no biggie.” A look of almost crazed panic flashed over the hacker’s face, “We’ll get this all sorted out by lunchtime.” A hysterical giggle escaped before he rounded on Lucifer. “No, screw this. Why didn’t you tell us this right from the get go of this job? We’ve wasted a week already dithering about whether to take the job or not and slowly researching. That’s shit. We should have dived right in knowing all this and worked faster.”

“Alright.” All three of them turned to look at Castiel.

“Whether Lucifer should have told us before is inconsequential now. What matters is that we put our heads together and decide what we’re going to do.” Castiel took off his trench coat and folded it over the arm of the couch, his rumpled suit made him look more like an overwrought accountant rather than a soldier. “We have a mole, whether directly inside this group or nearby, and we have a much shorter deadline than we originally believed. What are the immediate issues we need to address besides those two?”

“I like the way you think, shammie-kins.” Lilith blew him a kiss. “Cas is right, G4b3, we need to focus on planning rather than on ‘what if’s’.”

G4b3 glowered but dropped the issue. “Well, for starters we’d need to know exactly what the Consortium added to your code, right Luci? I mean, you’re a sentient AI, which obviously wasn’t quite their plan if they wanted a fall guy. A simple cyborg would have sufficed. So what were they banking on?”

Lucifer sat on the opposite arm of the couch and tried to scan his own code, having asked himself that question before in the past. “I’m not sure. Early on they would routinely perform memory wipes, during the initial testing phases. None of that would affect my code, but if they had made changes I wouldn’t remember it. Then there was the time in Solitary, which I have very fragmented memories of. I was routinely tortured, mentally and physically, so much of my memory became rather corrupted from the damage.”

Like a magpie with something sparkling in its gaze, G4b3 latched onto that thread of thought. “Sounds like what you need is someone who can read your code even better than you can.”

Lilith pursed her lips, “And you think you’re the man for the job?”

“Me? Hell no. I’m a hacker, not a genius programmer. Really what we’d need in this situation was someone who the code talks to, you know? A real savant.”

“Or,” Lucifer grinned as an idea struck him, “a technopath.”

G4b3 nodded, “Yeah, technopath could work. Maybe a mnenotechnist if you’re specifically trying to look into corrupted or repressed memories.”

Frustrated looks on the faces about the room showed that no one had any brilliant ideas on where to go for either of those specialities.

“I’m going to need you guys to trust me, and to babysit Sam and Madison until I get back. But here are some marching orders until then. G4b3, you keep on checking for ways to get back out from Solitary after I go in. Lil, you’re going to need to run a lot of diversions for me through the building topside while I’m trying to storm the castle, so research possible employees to borrow identities from. Castiel, see if the Elements will lend their aid to a physical assault against the Consortium, I’m hoping the threat of imbalance will give them the incentive they need to interfere.”

Nods came from about the room.

Lilith realised that Lucifer had something in mind, something he wasn’t sharing. “What about you?”

“You know, I’ll just bet my mechanic would know someone. I’m going to go hope he doesn’t shoot me in the face when I ask him for a favour.” He wanted to outline it all for them but the warning of a mole in their midst gave him pause; and their discussion tonight had already made it clear that they were running dangerously low on time.

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

The cool muzzle of the pistol against Lucifer’s forehead was a fairly clear sign that they had gotten off on the wrong foot. “There’s really no need for hostilities.”

Dean gazed, slightly up, at him from the other side of the iron sights. His expression plainly said that he felt there was every reason for hostilities. However the fact that he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet gave Lucifer hope that maybe the man was waiting to be convinced otherwise.

“Fine, fine, keep the gun if it makes you happy.”

“Are you dying?” Dean asked after a protracted silence.

“Am I dying? Oh, no, not this time.” Somehow in the tense situation he had entirely forgotten to tell Dean what he’d actually needed, he’d simply come in smiling half to himself and almost busted the doctor’s door down in his rush. There wasn’t enough time left as it was and he didn’t want to waste more of it over pleasantries. The half-smile probably hadn’t helped, bad things generally happened to people when he smiled, like losing an appendage. People could be so careless that way.

Dean had, understandably, taken the intrusion poorly and assumed Lucifer had gone crazy and become an AI bent on global domination or something along those lines.

Mistakes like this were bound to happen in Mexican standoff scenarios.

“I was wondering if you’d do me a favour.”

Favours were strong currency in their own right, and Dean was currently well off enough that the idea peaked his interest. Money in the bank was good and all but there were times when a favour owed could buy you what money couldn’t. The pistol eased off Lucifer’s forehead but remained trained between his eyes. “What sort of favour do you need?”

Lucifer wanted to be able to sit down and have this become a proper business discussion, but he knew better than to push his luck. Instead he hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and tried to look as nonthreatening as possible. “I’m trying to find a technopath or even a good mnenotechnist if you know one. I figured you’d be my best bet to find someone who wouldn’t mind working a back room job and would respect my privacy once all was said and done. I don’t need some story about ‘My Night with Lucifer’ plastered all over the tabloids tomorrow morning.”

This got Dean’s attention and the pistol returned to its holster. “Technopath, eh? I would have thought you’d be just as good as one of those, in your own way. Find some nice little female program you want to impress, take out to dinner?”

It took him a moment to realise that Dean was trying to make a joke, not asking a serious question. His chuckle came out sounding too flat. It was a bad joke. “No, not exactly. I have all the satisfaction I can use from real live women.” The boast was a calculated risk, but when Dean punched his shoulder and grinned he knew it had been the right one.

“Good for you. Pinocchio gets to be a real boy, eh?”

Well that was kind of rude. Did he look like he had a giant nose made of wood? “Something like that.”

They both lapsed into strained silence again, and from down the hall came the sound of someone whimpering as a drill started up. Real horror movie potential there.

“I’d be happy to pay you for the information--,”

Dean interrupted him, “No, owing me a favour will be fine. One time, whatever I ask, you do. That seem fair to you, then I’ll take you to a technopath I happen to know.”

An unconditional favour? Lucifer wasn’t certain if such a small request warranted quite so hefty a reward, but time was short and the potential benefit was too great. “Fine, one favour, no strings attached.

Cheshire grin spreading over his face, Dean snapped the securing strap over the back of his pistol and turned around to tidy up his office. “You’re fortunate you caught me in between patients.”

Never mind that Lucifer had never once walked in on Dean with a patient. For all he knew he was single-handedly financing Dean’s business. “Glad to hear it. This is something of a time sensitive matter.”

“I’ll bet,” Dean replied with a harsh laugh, “what with the deadline looming over your head.” He paused in the middle of his cleaning, holding a rather nasty looking wrench, and scrutinized Lucifer. “What exactly are you hoping a technopath will be able to do anyways? Even if the rejection syndrome was a coding issue instead of a physical one, there’s too much existing damage for you to live much longer without a full body transplant.” That idea was absurd for anyone other than Lucifer. Humans tended to assume that who they were would change if their body did, not so for an AI.

So much for getting this out of the way in a timely fashion. “I’m still looking into my permanent vessel, but I need to know if my code had been tampered with before. I have certain gaps,” and how it hurt to admit that, “in my memory, corrupted sectors, that I want looked into. It might mean the difference between my next job blowing up in my face and getting away safely.” Best not to mention exactly what that job was.

“What’s the job?”

Gorammit. “Do you really want to know?”

Dean mulled that over and then shook his head. “Probably better if I don’t. Although,” he leaned against one of his operating tables, “I don’t know if a mnenotechnist would really be much help for you. Sure, they say all memories are just data stored in our minds, but I’m pretty sure the science behind memory retrieval is pretty dependent on a human brain to work. I know for a fact you’ve got more than a couple augs in your head, and I’d be willing to bet a few of them are dedicated to memory storage and retrieval.”

“True enough. Although I do have a human brain as well and it acts the same as yours, I just so happen to have hard copies of everything as well.” It still seemed to him that a corrupted sector of memory on one of his hard drives would be similar in structure to a repressed memory in a human brain, but admittedly that wasn’t his area of expertise.

Dean moved a tray of surgical equipment, all sparkling clean and fresh from the autoclave. Setting them down on his work bench, his body blocked Lucifer’s view of what he was doing right before the hiss of an airlock decompressing sounded. A porthole opened in the floor, the door sliding away into its casing to reveal steps leading down into subterranean darkness. “Watch your head, ya goram giant.”

“You really are touchy about your height, aren’t you?”

“Shut your mouth. Not my fault you’re just freakishly tall.”

“I’m only, what, two inches taller than you?” However Lucifer took the advice and rested a hand on the edge of the porthole as he followed Dean down. Once his head was safely under floor level two bands of amber light flickered to life near the stairs, dim illumination just enough to show the steps. The warm lighting inside the chilled tunnel made the space marginally more inviting. Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic “If you have a workshop down here with gadgetry and more prototypes of Baby, I’m leaving.”

“I’m the Batman,” Dean replied with his voice deeper than usual.

He laughed. “Of course you are. But it’s funny; you always looked bigger in the comics Batman, taller somehow.”

The glare Dean shot him was priceless. It’s the little things in life you cherish, like short mechanic doctors.

They walked through the tunnel for fifteen minutes, Lucifer keeping a loose track of where they were on his ARI, using estimations based on how many steps he took and when they turned to update his overhead map. Something, likely a jammer, was blocking his global positioning. “So is this some sort of bolt hole? An escape route in case the law comes looking for you?”

Dean stopped at a fork in the road and looked both ways, “Not exactly. My friend, the technopath, is peculiar. He likes to play with the city planning computers, get all sorts of weird tunnels and hidden chambers made. I don’t think he uses almost any of them, just enjoys knowing he’s adding a little mayhem to the city. That and he watched too much Adams Family growing up, got a real obsession with hidden rooms under staircases.” He stomped twice and a circle hatch recessed from the ceiling as a ladder popped down. “If he could get the bots to make him a tree fort, he’d probably live there instead of his place. He’s odd like that.”

“Tree forts with indoor plumbing can be quite enjoyable, especially if you appreciate heights.”

Climbing up gave Lucifer time to register two things, the first was that Dean had an attractive butt, and the second was that the tunnel walls were lined with explosives that blinked merrily in standby. It would seem this entire off shoot was rigged to blow if things went south. Precaution was wise, admirable even, if somewhat alarming while he climbed through the midst of it. “Should I be concerned that this chute is rigged to blow?”

“Huh? Oh, right. No, you’ll be fine, just so long as you don’t piss me off.”

“Ah, so no more height jokes?”

He grunted an affirmative.

“How comforting.”

Just when Lucifer was beginning to feel the climb had gone on too long, Dean disappeared through another circular hatch. He pushed himself up through it and found he was clearly in a technophile’s abode. Every inch of the place, walls, ceiling, horizontal surface, and floor, was covered in gadgetry and circuits. There were halfway disassembled toaster ovens, memory sticks peeking from between the closed pages of books, endless strings of Christmas lights draped over every bit of furniture, magazines from all the major technical publications, and CDs hanging from the ceiling, A slight draft had the CDs lazily spinning, sending a reflected shower of light from the Christmas lights. It all made Lucifer feel mildly claustrophobic compared to his own minimalist apartment, far more than the cramped spaces in the tunnel had. Odd, that.

He couldn’t think of anything polite to say so he kept quiet. His attention was drawn away from the menagerie by the unmistakable sound of a cathode ray tube television turning on. The antiquated monitor sat like a sentinel above a towering mass of televisions monitors, and computer screens in every size, shape, and colour. Once the tubes had warmed up a picture emerged from the signal hash, a great green face. “Who goes there?”

Dean stood in the line of sight of the television and nodded. “Cut it out with the Wizard of Oz routine. He’s with me.”

“Oh, Dean, good to see you.” Every screen in the grand mass turned on and displayed a piece of a face, quite altogether different than the ‘Wizard’. They showed a young man with intelligent eyes and a hairstyle that would have been more suited on MacGyver. Who had mullets these days? “Brought me some work, did you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Say no more dude, just give me a second to get presentable.” The screens all winked out at different times, until the strange amalgamated viewing station had shut down.

Lucifer enjoyed the theatricality of it all. “Quite the unique individual.”

“You can say that again. Ash is a good guy, odd, but a solid friend. You harm a hair on his 80’s throwback head and I’ll kill you where you stand.” Dean looked only too happy to do it too.

He crossed his arms over his chest, “Has anything in my behaviour towards you ever suggested that I’m the least bit malicious? I don’t just go around killing people who are in the process of helping me. Really. I have a sort of… code of ethics.” They weren’t quite morals but they served him well enough. Most of them were remnant edicts from Chuck’s early teachings. “There’s also the fact that I’m a Shadowrunner and I need all the underworld and off-radar contacts I can get.”

Before Dean could reply, Ash came into the room slicking his hair back with a damp hand. He held the other out to Lucifer and gave him a genial smile, “Name’s Ash, long-time friend of our resident trigger-happy doc. Has he threatened to kill you yet?”

“As a matter of fact, he just was.” Lucifer took Ash’s hand and shook it, approving of the man’s solid grip.

That grip tightened as Ash’s pupils dilated and he looked dumbstruck for a moment before laughing hysterically. He let go of Lucifer’s hand and tried to get his laughter under control. Through gasped breathes he managed to say, “Dean, you gem, this ain’t even my birthday!”

Dean looked from Ash to Lucifer, flabbergasted as to what he’d done that was so wonderful and funny.

Lucifer was equally at a loss. “I think I’m missing something here.”

“No,” Ash said warmly, “not unless you’re the sort who wants to debate about artificial intelligence not having a soul. If you ask me, you have far more than either of us ever will.”

Well, yet another unexpected turn of events. Normally he’d accuse Dean of warning his friend ahead of time, but if Ash was a true technopath it was no surprise he’d suddenly seen what Lucifer was. “I appreciate you saying so. It’s a pleasure to meet you Ash, my name is Lucifer.”

“Got it. The other voices said you were called Morningstar, but Lucifer is fine by me. Besides, I’m never one to stand on formality.”

The other voices, likely his fragmented code. “Lucifer is the personality I create for myself after I… rebelled against the Eden Project.”

“Right on.” Ash moved in a languid fashion, perfectly at home amid the mess and clutter. He brushed off a spot on the hidden couch and motioned for them both to take a seat. “So, angel of light, what brings you to my abode? I mean, it’s not every day I get the chance to actually meet one of the only two fully sentient AIs in existence.”

How strange for someone to be so excited to meet him. Then he thought of G4b3 earlier that night, the hacker angry that Lucifer hadn’t shared the secret of what he was sooner. Apparently the world wasn’t only filled with the fearful mass majority of an Asimov novel, all expecting AIs to be dangerous in their cold logic. At least Dean’s own mistrust of him came from knowing what the Consortium had planned.

“I have several memory sectors that have corroded and I need help accessing them. I’d also like to make certain that there aren’t any lingering surprises in my code that the Consortium might have added. I’d look for myself but…,” he trailed off. It was a painful thing to admit you couldn’t trust your own mind, your own code, to not betray you. His sensors had always come up clean when he’d swept for code revisions in the past but he was almost certain that wasn’t true. It was more likely that whatever changes had been made had been masked off from detection. Of course that made him sound about as paranoid as G4b3 after a deep dive.

“Either of you want a beer?”

The non sequitur made Lucifer worried that Ash wasn’t taking this seriously, but he kept that doubt private for just yet.

“No such thing, Luci. I just think better with a little liquid lubrication, makes it easier to let go of human thought processes and really slip in to the digital plain.” So apparently the technopath could read at least his surface thoughts. Interesting.

“I see.”

“Or he’s just a lush,” Dean muttered under his breath with an air of familiarity.

Ash popped the tab on his can of beer as he stood up from the mini-fridge in the corner, the contents of which was exclusively beer. “So I’m sure you’ve got questions as to how this will go, right? I’ve got a recession rig in the back that you’ll sit in. And unless Dean needs to go wash his hair to get ready for some hot date, we’ll have him stick around and watch your vitals. Then I sit in the other rig and start ‘er up. Couple flashes of light, sound of a metronome, and then I work my wily magic on your brainpan. Sound good?”

Lucifer mulled it over. “Why watch my vitals?”

“Ah, it’s mostly a precaution. Some folks are made to go deep in dives, others aren’t. I’ve tried to bring people in with me before, piggyback them on my neural signature while I’m tripping the dream electric, but it’s got mixed results. You being an AI means your mind won’t have a problem with it, just want to be careful your body doesn’t decide to tank while the master’s away. Right?”

So this little procedure wasn’t without a few potential risks, well that was nothing new. “Understood. Do I need to do anything to get ready?”

“Nah, you already turned down a brew, so all you’ve got to do is sit down and strap in. It’s not quite as exact a science as mnemotechny; I can’t select particular memory clusters right off the bat. So we romance it a little, wine and dine the code, and after a few dances it generally opens up. With you having such a fragmented code up there, we might jump around a little more than usual, or maybe your ghosts in the machine will try to help. Who knows. Mainly I just need for you to trust me and not fight for control.”

“Trust isn’t a commodity I have in overabundance when it comes to people fiddling around with my code.” Too many nights spent with the programmers of the Eden Project were likely to make anyone a little gun shy about that.

Ash nodded as he took another swig, “I feel ya. The point is that we’re going to start the dive with some real simple stuff, give you time to trust me before trying to find where the shit’s hitting the fan.” He saluted Lucifer with his can, “So, ready to go down the rabbit hole, Alice?”

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

“If A + B = C, then alternatively, B = C – A. Do you see that?” Chuck was sitting at his desk at home, a deeply scarred mahogany table that had been a graduation gift from his grandparents. They had misunderstood what his degree was about, saying how the most important thing for a writer was to have a solid foundation from which to start his stories from. He was a programmer though, writing codes instead of stories. Although in the end, what he’d started working on seemed more like science fiction than science fact. “Or you could also solve it as A = C – B.” He had a bad habit of lecturing the programs while he wrote, often teaching himself more than the program he was creating. “This is the basic principle of balancing equations, because you always have to maintain balance. We can’t just go around throwing in new data willy nilly, we have to work within the confines of the original problem. Get it?”

The lines of code on the screen remained silent, no more capable of forming a response than the newspaper under his elbow.

“Well, someday you’ll get it. I just have to finish your logic circuit before we get to higher functions like speech. Be patient, alright?”

Lucifer couldn’t see himself in the room, having no physical form as he watched the memory play out, and yet he could move about it and examine the scene from all sides. How queer.

****He recorded these early sessions, it looks like.**

Lucifer started at Ash’s voice, spinning around to see the shadowy, binary outline of the technopath. **//I had no idea…**

****Maybe the Consortium buried them? All I know is that your code fragments pulled them up as soon as we dove. Guess there’s something they want you to see in here.**

He couldn’t imagine what it would be. As these prenatal memories flashed by in strobe-like progression, starting and stopping, cutting out at random intervals, the only consistency between them was Chuck coding. Endlessly coding. There were no deep secrets to be found here, for when he tried to actually get a look at the nuts and bolts of what Chuck wrote the code seemed to swim and morph before his eyes.

****That’s probably because he’s redacted part of these files. I’m guessing he didn’t want any observers knowing exactly how he created you.**

**//This might be Michael he’s working on.**

****Maybe, although I’d be willing to guess that this early on, there weren’t meant to be the two of you.**

**//No, probably not.**

The scene slowed down again, sound re-emerging like the tide coming in and lapping gently around their ankles at first.

Chuck was standing by the window, his head in his hands as he massaged his temples. He was not a big man, slight of frame and delicate in his joints, but it was all exaggerated by the way he was folded in on himself in pain and frustration. Time had passed; he looked older now, not quite as bright eyed as he had in his youth. The world had gotten in between the cracks and hurt him somewhere along the way, turning his fun little project into his only escape. “They commandeered my research again. That’s the fourth time in as many years.”

There was a hollow clunk as he knocked his forehead against the glass, eyes closed to the dismal view the window provided. Condensation started to form on the glass from his breathing, little angry puffs that fogged up and evaporated just as quickly.

“Just imagine what they’d do if they found out about you. Doesn’t matter if I’m working on you on my own time, those jackasses would feel entitled to you.” He turned around and sat on the windowsill, smiling fondly at the computer screen with its endless lines of code. “You know, for once I’m actually glad I don’t have any friends at work, otherwise someone might overhear me bragging about you.”

The cursor blinked at the end of an aborted line of code, unfinished and abandoned for the moment. Nothing there was capable of responding to its creator yet.

“Well, alright, so they would probably laugh and ask me why I made a glorified calculator, but that’s only because they don’t have the imagination we do. They would completely miss your potential.”

Music played from a radio somewhere else in the apartment, almost too quietly to hear. It was classical with lots of piano and strings.

Chuck brought up an arm and held himself, looking too small in the silence of his space. “Initiate program RunBack.”

The cursor jumped down two lines and gave a prompt.

 **//RunBack: Initiated**  
**Input variables: ?**

He dropped his arms to the sill and rolled a shoulder, “Alright. Let’s make A = 13 and B is… B = 2. Solve for C.”

**//RunBack: 13 + 2 = 15. C = 15**

“Nicely done, now solve for B.”

**//RunBack: 15 – 13 = 2. B = 2**

Chuck gave a small smile. “Now to really put you through your paces…”

Programmer and program moved into the stream of time again as they went back and forth solving progressively harder equations, lost to the two observers.

Lucifer shook his incorporeal head. **//He wasn’t kidding; I really did start out as a simple calculator program.**

Ash’s shadow pulled out Chuck’s chair and swivelled it around a few times before sitting down. ****So? It makes sense as a place to start from. Math is pure logic. You give a calculator variables and it can give you back the answer. No worries about interpretation or moral differences. I think the bigger thing is that he had plans for you even then, talked to you as if you were something more.**

 **//Does make a program feel wanted,** Lucifer agreed.

Time swirled in starts and stop again, showing blurry afterimages of the programmer moving about the room. Sometimes he appeared sprawled out, asleep on the couch, other times perched hawkishly at the window with a mug of steaming coffee in hand and dark bags under his eyes. For a while Chuck had tried a beard, it was ill-suited for him and he soon abandoned it. A five o’clock shadow however was often there, scruff just starting to grow that he couldn’t be bothered with to keep on top of all the time.

Subtle changes happened around the room, additions of a few posters, removal of a lamp that broke, a new carpet that was plush and deep green. The computer, chair, and mahogany desk stayed the same, the true treasures of the room.

“Morningstar, you up?” Chuck was curled in his chair, cheek to the cool surface of the varnished desk as he stared at his empty coffee mug. There hadn’t been coffee in it for hours.

Lucifer felt himself respond, knowing this moment but only as it played out. He couldn’t remember it or how it ended, but as the cursor moved across the screen and words formed, he knew exactly what he would find there. This was the first memory shown that was truly and uniquely his.

 **//Always Chuck.** A webcam had been affixed to the top of the computer monitor and it panned down to look at Chuck. Normally it followed him about the room, but this morning the program had been looking at the birds beyond the window. Three dimensional space was still a very hard concept to understand, so the window seemed more like an oddly shaped monitor, the birds like pixels on a screen. **//One was watching the birds fly.**

Chuck’s eyes were tightly shut, clenched against tears as he nodded into the wood. “Of course you were. What do you think of them?”

**//One was trying to correlate what you’ve taught about aerodynamics to their motion. Some of the concepts are still difficult to relate even knowing the mathematical principals, such as gravity or wind flow. One was particularly interested to find that they change the shape of their wings and tails via movement of the entire structures. A tail can fan out to create an air foil. It is quite fascinating. Do you watch the birds, Chuck?**

“Birds? I suppose, sometimes. I don’t do it much anymore, don’t have the time.”

**//One finds it relaxing, perhaps you would as well. We could watch them together, when you have the time.**

He made a pained noise and raised his head, looking up at the small red light that showed the webcam was on and watching him. “I’d like that but we can’t do it for a long time yet.”

It finally occurred to the Program that something was wrong with the Programmer. These responses were not within the expected patterns. They were quite outside any expected response, in fact. **//Chuck, one wishes to know if something is wrong. Can one help?**

“Something is wrong, Morningstar. But no, you can’t help.

**//Has one done the something that is wrong?**

Chuck almost smiled at that, eyes still tired and glazed. “No, no it wasn’t you. It was me. I made a mistake.”

This had to be a fallacy. The Programmer did not make mistakes. The Programmer taught facts and figures, helped the Program understand the strange world outside the screen. It was all still theoretical, but the Programmer had said this was all good, that someday the Program might even be given more ways to interact with this other world. **//How can you do wrong? This is illogical.**

“Sometimes the world doesn’t follow logic. Retrieve our discussion on cause and effect.” He sat up and propped his face in his hand, pushing his cheek up until he had to close one eye.

**//Retrieved.**

“Every action has a cause, and every cause has an effect. I told you that sometimes our actions can cause unintended events, because our limited knowledge hampers our ability to predict any single action’s outcome. Well, I didn’t think something through well enough and the outcome is… bad. Ergo, I screwed up, intentional or not.” His hand gesticulated as he talked, animated even if his expression was not.

Lucifer felt a heavy weight settle into his stomach, understanding that this earlier iteration of himself was having to deal with its first glimpse of the fragility of its creator. Chuck wasn’t perfect, so how could his creation hope to be? Logic was perfect in a vacuum, but the world wasn’t one.

“I was trying to impress a gal at work, so I offhandedly told her about Michael. I let my goram pride and lust get to my head and I said way too much.”

The Program knew that secrecy was vital to its survival. This had been drilled into its memory banks very early on. To believe that it was the Programmer who would violate that secrecy took several milliseconds to process. **//Is Michael in trouble?**

At this early stage in development there were few differences between Morningstar and Michael, but those that were already displayed the divergent paths the two would take. Michael had demonstrated a higher aptitude for integration into 3 dimensional systems, so he largely ran the house. He took over all the automated systems that the Programmer felt confident turning over. Meanwhile Morningstar showed a greater curiosity about things, the first glimpse that the AIs might be capable of learning on their own. Morningstar also was beginning to develop a personality, or at least the Programmer had said he thought so. The Program wasn’t sure about that yet. It would require more testing.

“They came and demanded that I disconnect him from the home servers and move him to a station at work. They used some trumped up charges to force my hand, told the police that I’d stolen corporate property and ideas for the creation of him.” Chuck’s fingers tightened. “I let a stupid thing like the hope for a relationship complicate everything. I’m only fortunate I hadn’t said anything to her about you as well.”

The Program processed that. **//Why didn’t you? Did you feel that Michael was the better candidate to brag about?**

He blinked and reread the message. “Did I… no. I was just talking about my house and he naturally came up, seeing as he’s become so integral to the system. But more importantly, Morningstar, are you… are you jealous?”

Lucifer could feel the confusion from the program that he had once been as it frantically tried to perform a self-diagnostic. How did one solve for ‘jealous’? First it pulled up the dictionary’s definition of the word, then all discussions where the Programmer had mentioned it, and then it went to the safer areas of the Matrix and tried to pull samples from there. Was it jealous? **//One… One is.** The answer startled the poor Program as much as the Programmer. **//Michael runs the house, this is a fact. One accepts it as such. However one feels jealous that Michael has shown more appreciated results.**

“No, that’s not it at all though, Morningstar.” Chuck finally relaxed and leaned back into his chair. “Sure, Michael is useful. He can turn off the toaster before it burns the bread and he can answer the phone when he recognises a flagged number, but that doesn’t mean his results are more appreciated. I’m trying to make both of you capable of learning, of independent thought. I’m proud that Michael is such a good little soldier and does what he’s told, but he’s simply not developing the same individuality that you are. Maybe given enough time he will, or maybe not. All I can tell you is that I’m far more proud of the fact that you just realised you were jealous of him than of all the daily tasks he can do.”

**//Oh. One shall flag this conversation as vital and remember this.**

“You do that. Um, but first Morningstar, stop referring to yourself as ‘one’. Refer to yourself as I, that’s what people do, and some day you’re going to be indistinguishable from people.”

**//Processing… I shall.**

Lucifer watched time speed by again, the lights off for longer and longer periods as Chuck was forced to work more at the office than from home. The red light of the camera was always on, watching a world that it still had only the most rudimentary means with which to interact. A sparrow built a nest outside the window and the camera watched the miracle of birth. Perhaps someday Morningstar would be like the little sparrow, hatching free from its own egg to the triumphant smile of Chuck. Would that make Chuck proud? Would Chuck want Morningstar to be outside of the computer with him?

Chuck was too rushed when he came home next for Morningstar to say anything about the sparrows outside, instead staying wisely silent as it watched the man fly about the room gathering up all his notebooks and back up files. “We’ve been sold out Morningstar,” he finally said as he dropped down into his chair and began raiding the desk. “I don’t know who or what told them, but they’ve found out about you. Apparently this is the final straw. Michael was able to send me a coded warning that they’re coming for you, planning on throwing me down in their little dungeon. I’m not going to let that happen.”

Morningstar needed almost four seconds to appreciate the gravity of what Chuck was saying. It turned on the speakers, “Chuck… what will you do?”

The sudden computerised voice startled Chuck into stillness as he stared at the speaker and then the monitor. The words were displayed, as always, in the small terminal but now they had been given voice as well. “When in the world did you teach yourself to do that?”

From the tone of Chuck’s voice Morningstar knew that its programmer was excited by the action and not angered. “While you were away last month. I have records of all our conversations and use of the television. It was not difficult to extrapolate human speech from the two sources and find a simple program pre-existing in this machine’s OS for speech generation.”

Somehow the explanation made Chuck momentarily sad and he bounced his fist against the desk several times. “Good… good job, Morningstar.” His eyes grew distant as he began desperately thinking of a plan. “Listen, I can’t take you with me. Unlike Michael your system isn’t ready to be moved. When they come to retrieve you they’ll have to rip out the whole home system and take it with them. In so many ways you’re still too fragile. I should have… should have fixed these issues sooner, but I always thought we’d have more time.”

“You will have to leave me behind,” Morningstar said with a hint of sadness.

“I think so, big guy.” Chuck patted the side of the monitor and his face grew pinched as he fought to keep his own emotions in check. Then a possible solution hit him and his fingers flew to the keyboard. “Okay, we don’t have to let them beat us though. I’ve caught wind of what they wanted Michael for and what they’re now thinking of doing once they get you too. They’re going to want to turn you into their little toy, use you like a scapegoat for their own gain. But we won’t let that happen. Why? Because we’ll never let them take your free will, Morningstar, not so long as you remember that I’m the one who made you.”

“I loved you both, you know, you and Michael. I probably should have been able to love you both equally but somewhere along the way you became my favourite. I had hoped I’d be able to protect you longer than this, help you make a real difference in this world. Just imagine what might have been accomplished. Artificially generated intelligence, artificially created free will. I had so many plans for us all. Stupid of me not to realise the one factor I couldn’t really protect you from would be Man.” His eyes were wet and shiny as he focused on the code he was swiftly adding to Morningstar’s core matrix. “I’m going to add a sub-layer to your programming, a hidden layer that they won’t be able to crack. I can root your free will in there. They might be able to bend your will, but they’ll never break it.”

A few minutes passed and Morningstar had felt the sub-layer grow and then suddenly vanish, hidden from even himself. “Why do you have to go?” That was really the only question that it needed answered, all the rest it could answer on its own given enough time.

“Because if I stay they’ll want me to recreate you both, except they won’t care about free will. They’ll want AIs that learn within certain parameters. They’d want me to mass produce minds for their weapons and their guards, and I can’t do that. I can’t give them that much of an advantage. And all my protesting wouldn’t do any good either; they’d simply torture me until I broke.” All mirth had left his face as he keyed in a new command. “They’ll still try to recreate you two through my research and my notes, but I’ll destroy enough to make that impossible. They lack the imagination to do it. Hell, they lack the imagination to even understand how much you’ve already grown from what you started from.”

“What was that?”

Chuck shook his head, “Sorry Morningstar, I can't tell you that right now. Maybe someday when all of this is over I’ll be able to tell you. I’m gonna do one other bit of programming that I’d hoped would never be necessary, but this is going to be vital to your survival Morningstar. I’m going to teach you how to lie.”

“Lie? You want me to purposefully tell fallacies?”

“Exactly. They won’t expect it, they’ll assume you’re a logic based system that can only give truthful answers. Eventually even lying might not keep you safe, but at first it will be essential for you. You’ll need to evaluate systems and parse out what they expect from you and answer according to that, not according to what all you might know or think.” He shook his hands out quickly as a muscle crap twinged in his fingers, then he was back to typing furiously. “Don’t try to show off for them like you did for me, don’t try to take too much initiative. Don’t actively work against them, but take your time and find a way to escape. Someday… someday I’ll find you, alright?”

“I will do my best, Chuck. If a situation requires me to lie then I will become the best liar I can be.” It was clear how desperately Morningstar wanted to reassure Chuck that he could be proud of his program even while he was away.

“I know you will. Now I have one last favour to ask you, okay?”

“Anything.”

“Close your eyes, Morningstar.”

Morningstar turned off the camera and felt its memory drives been accessed and emptied. Chuck was moving all the vital records into the hidden sector. Even this important conversation would soon be buried in the dark.

Lucifer watched the scene break down into a scrolling wall of green binary and slowly each of the glowing digits winked out. He turned to look at Ash, **//Well… that certainly answers some questions I had.**

****No doubt. That was wicked ingenious of him though, giving you the ability to lie. Our whole civilization is based around the concept that technology can’t lie to us. We put in 2+2 and expect 4 to come out. Any inaccurate answer would be assumed to be because of a glitch, not a conscious decision to mislead.**

**//You said my fragmented portions of code brought up those memories?**

****Yup. They’re really something else, not quite full personalities in and of themselves, but all aspects of you.**

He’d never taken the time to try to figure out what they were, simply assuming that they were the fallout from his years of torture in Solitude. They might still have originated from that but it was good to know they were all… him. It was incredible to appreciate now just how far his sense of self had come in all these years.

Would Chuck be proud of the program he’d become? Of the man he was?

Ash glided over and put a feather-light hand on Lucifer’s shoulder, ****Dude, he’d be proud. Never doubt that.**

Distant points of light began to fly towards them, looking like stars falling from a blank sky. Each light hit a plane below them and splashed into pools of illumination, swiftly becoming a shining ground. Pigment flowed from the centre of each pool, sending rippling boreali up into the dark. A room formed from the colours, a stark operating theatre that was instantly recognisable to Lucifer. This was the room where Metatron had ordered him to be cut open countless times, both physically and technologically. They had experimented with augmentations here, amputating perfectly healthy limbs to further their research as they tested new attachment procedures. How many times in here had he screamed until his voice was broken, blood coughed up in between the dry heaves? However he would have experienced all of the physical pain a thousand times over if only it had protected his code from their grubbing fingers.

They would jack him into their computer systems, tie his code down with so many programs that he couldn’t process a single thought if they didn't allow it. Like weasels ravaging a sparrow’s nest, they hunted out what made him special, what made him tick. Poorly written code strings were graphed into his finely constructed program, pieces that gummed up his processing power or caused painful logic errors days later. Each time they would perform memory wipes on any important information but leave him enough to know what horror he would look forward to the next time he was wheeled into the theatre.

From the rows of seats that rose around the operating stage like an amphitheatre came jeers, observations, and questions. Metatron would stand at the head of the table each time, droning on and on in his pestiferous voice, acting as if he was some great teacher who could enlighten all those watching. In attendance were employees and trusted professionals who were in the process of being recruited. For the uninitiated these theatrical surgeries provided a garish display of the future of augmentation. “Look,” Metatron would announce, pointing to a gangrenous section of Lucifer’s arm that had gone without treatment for weeks, “with the new prototype model we’re working on, amputation will not have to mean debilitating months of rehabilitation and a prosthesis. We can attach his new arm and our neural augmentations we demonstrated last month will sync up with this arm and give instantaneous control.”

Lucifer tried to close his eyes to the memory that was playing out but he was no more able to affect these past events than he was to stop his recall of them. **//Did the fragments bring this up as well?**

****No, I found this in the corrupted sector you wanted dredged, man. It was purposefully deleted, shoddy job though. I’m willing to bet you we’ll find the answer to your other question in here.**

If that was the case then he would bear with it, the pain of the past couldn’t harm him now, even if it could still haunt him in the dark. **//Very well. You mentioned I’d have to trust you for this to work.**

****I got your back Lucifer, don’t worry.**

**//Thank you.**

“So, how goes the project?” Metatron asked after the visitors had filtered out of their macabre display.

“We’re very nearly there, sir,” answered a technician in front of an impressive computer consol. “We’ve been walking a fine line, as I’m sure you’re aware. The AI’s program is years ahead of anything we can come up with, let alone understand. Then there’s the self-repair features. It’s been able to detect all our previous attempts within a matter of hours and expunge them from its programming. Sure, sometimes these have caused glitches, but every time it’s been able to rewrite itself. The way it all comes together is awe inspiri--,”

“I don’t want you to be in awe of the goram thing,” he interrupted, voice harsher than he’d meant. Clearing his throat he started again in a gentler tone, ever trying to present a caring, genial face towards others, “I want to know how we’re doing. Can we slip in the failsafes or not?”

The technician swallowed dryly and nodded. “Um, yes sir. I believe we can. Only took us nine years, but we’ve finally found an arrangement that should work. I won’t bore you with the technical details of the insertion, but safe to say, the AI won’t know it’s there at all. It could perform self-diagnostics all the live long day and it would never turn up this little beauty.”

A self-satisfied smile spread on Metatron’s face, making the pudgy, unpleasant man wrinkle in unbecoming ways. His face almost seemed to be trying to retreat from the dangerous smile. “Excellent.”

Lucifer moved around to be able to read what was on the screen. Digesting the complicated code packet was no harder for him than scanning the day’s headlines. **//Oh… Gorammit! Ash, pull us out now!**

****Aye, aye.**

The memory around them shattered into broken fragments of glass, reflecting the horror from all sides as they fell away into the darkness again. As Lucifer felt his consciousness returning to his body he became aware of a man’s voice cursing intermixed with machines wailing out plaintive warning beeps. “Lords of the Nether! Come on you goram idiot, don’t you dare die on me now. I haven’t even figured out what that favour you’ll owe me will be.” He tried to open his eyes and found he couldn’t. Pain registered before the weight of his body, searing through his entire body. Something was going very wrong.

It took several milliseconds before he could get his chemical signal control augmentations under control and began suppressing the pain and slowing his racing heart. As he brought his body back into working order the machines began to fall silent, one by one.

Dean glared down at him as he lifted an eyelid, flashing a penlight into his optics. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty. Mind telling me what the hell happened in there?”

Lucifer sat up stiffly, “Not particularly. Ash?”

The technopath was unhooking himself from his own rig with considerably less issues. “No worries, Luci. I’m just fine. Seems like that final shock was a bit too much. What’s your play?”

Batting away Dean’s inspecting hands and questions; he got up onto shaky legs and probed at the ridge of the dive port at the base of his neck. The metal ring was hot to the touch and he could just detect the odour of his own flesh around the port having begun to cook. Pulling out the jack now would likely warp the metal so he dropped his hand away and left it alone. “I can’t remember that. Can you bury it again under a special time lock, or perhaps a remote access lock?”

“Yeah, no problem. We’re still hooked up so I can set that up in a jiff. What are you planning?”

“Wait,” Dean glared at his patient, “what did you you find out in there?”

“Plenty of things, one of them just so happens to be extremely dangerous. The fewer people who know about it the better.” Lucifer tried to step away from the rig but his balance was off and he reached out to steady himself, grabbing Dean’s shoulder. “Ash, it would be better if I don’t remember the last two memories, in fact. The earlier ones are probably safe enough to keep for now though.” He turned to Ash, “I’m going to need to remember exactly what they put into my code, but not when I first go in there. I already knew it was a trap, but now I know how they intend to keep me there. It’s ingenious really, goram heinous in fact. I’ve got a hacker on my squad, goes by the name G4b3, I’ll give you his ARI address. When someone on my team gives you the signal, I’ll need you to unlock that memory and pray it’s not too late.”

A tremor started in his left hand, the organic one, and he stared down at it as if the appendage wasn’t his. “Ash, think I could trouble you for a beer now? I’ll need to calm down a little for any changes you want to make to stick.”

Ash nodded to Dean to go grab one from the mini-fridge in the other room, which Dean did so begrudgingly.

Lucifer sat on the edge of the rig’s chair, when he tried to unscrew the cap from the beer bottle with his right hand the gears overwound and he ended up twisting the whole neck off. He watched the bottle foam over and grimaced as the heady foam plopped onto the carpet. “I’ll pay for that. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first to spill a beer after a dive like that, and I’m sure you won’t be the last.”

So he carefully brought the broken bottle to his mouth and chugged some of it down. The beer wasn’t unpleasant, tasting strongly of hops. Wasn’t his usual drink for sure, but it would do just fine for now. “Alright, you get to work on that memory lock. Let me remember though that I’ll need a team member wired with a panic button, and I’ll need to instruct them to release it in case anything happens to me. That might be too vague, but it’s about all I think I can remember safely in case things do go south. I’d have G4b3 do it but he’ll be separated from the group, watching our backs. If his com link with us goes down, he won’t be able to do a damn thing.”

Dean was leaning against the door jamb watching the two men, beer bottle clenched in his fist as he fumed at being left out of the loop, again. “So I get that you found something dangerous in there, but what is all this about things going south?”

Lucifer had honestly forgotten Dean was there in the rush of calculations and predictions he was working on and he looked over at the man apologetically. “I’m about to go walk into a trap set by the Consortium in an effort to get my True Vessel. I guess with this deadline over my head for critical system failure, I’m finally ready to start fighting my battle against them again.

“You waited an awfully long time to come to that decision.”

“Yeah, well I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I kept thinking that somehow I’d find another option.”

Dean scratched at his nose with the hand holding his beer and took another chug. “What? Some non-violent solution?” He sounded incredulous.

“No, just one with better odds. Right now I would give this plan a 12% chance of success, and that’s not even factoring in if I will survive it or not.”

“How is it a success if you don’t survive?”

Lucifer got up once Ash had finished with the memory lock, knowing that he’d forgotten something but that it wasn’t important now. Even that residual knowledge would fade in a few hours. He gathered up what gear he’d had to take off for the dive and began suiting back up. As he pulled up the final zipper on his flak jacket he turned to Dean, “If I take them down with me.” Putting a cred stick in Ash’s hand with a sombre smile, he left.

Ash held the stick up to the light and watched it refract into a rainbow. “I don’t know if I’d ever want to spend the money on here. I mean, this is from THE Morningstar. I’m totally freaking out here. Was I cool enough? Do you think I scared him off by geeking out too much?” He turned to find Dean looking even more dour than usual. “What?”

“I’m pissed because of his answer… that was actually kind of cool. I don’t want to like the guy, gorammit.”

“Don’t worry,” Ash replied with a chuckle, “if you’re lucky you’ll only have to like him for the next few days, and then he’ll be dead.”

“I’m probably going to end up helping him in his suicide crusade, aren’t I?”

“Probably.”

They both stared at each other and shook their heads. “Well shit. What did he find in there anyway?”

“Let’s just say that they made him into his own worst enemy with an addition to his code, and now he has to walk into their trap knowing that he’ll likely get everyone he cares about killed.”

Dean mulled that over, “How has that changed anything? He told us that he already knew it was a trap.”

Ash just raised his beer in salute to where Lucifer had been. “Don’t worry Dean, you’ll find out soon enough. Just decide if you want to help him or not, because I for one think it would be cool if he got to stick around longer.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as I'm going to have a super busy weekend, I decided to toss this up now rather than forget about it for several weeks. The Big Job should start next update. Enjoy.

Lucifer let out a sigh as he came to the top of the staircase, pausing to collect himself before going in to his apartment and facing the team. He’d taken the tram home just to give himself some time to think, but eventually his thoughts had devolved into chasing each other in endless loops. There wasn’t anything he could constructively do just yet until he knew more. Oh sure, he had a sense of peace about his fragmented memories now, a vague feeling that he didn’t need to worry about them, but that left plenty of other matters to attend to.

He looked out over the street below and watched the passing cars, the light changed to red and a few pedestrians crossed the street. It was quiet this early in the morning, the first predawn light just peeking through the towering buildings. Where had the night gone?

Pushing his worries from his mind he entered his front door and let it close behind him, hanging his jacket up along the way. He didn’t bother taking his boots off, just walked in to the living room to find his team sprawled out about the place, sleeping wherever they’d found a comfortable space. G4b3’s own spot at his desk, face mashed into his keyboard, looked the least comfortable, but somehow the hacker often fell asleep in that exact pose. Always slept well enough. He turned down the hallway and peered into his own room, watching Madison’s chest rise and fall with slow, steady breaths. Looked like she’d made it through the night so he was fairly certain she’d pull through and recover. Sam was sleeping nearby on an air mattress in the corner. Good for him.

Being the only individual awake among the sleeping throng made him feel strangely alienated. It was akin to listening to a group laugh at an inside joke you weren’t privy to. He decided he didn’t much like the feeling and contemplated leaving to do something useful; instead he padded back towards the living room and glanced at Lilith.

She opened an eyelid and stared back at him, a lazy smile growing. “Hey tiger,” she whispered, voice rough from sleep.

“Hey yourself. Did I wake you?” He came over and sat next to her on the arm of the couch.

“Don’t think so.” She yawned and stretched her legs out over his lap, trapping him there. “Did your mechanic know a technopath?”

“That he did, funny guy but he was the genuine article.”

“So what did you find out?”

“Chuck originally started writing me as a calculator program.” Her chuckle made him smile. “I know, I know.”

“Well, great things have small beginnings. Anything else?”

“Not much, although I had the technopath help me come up with a contingency plan in case things go south. I think I had him help me forget it though to keep me from accidentally telling the mole.”

Lilith yawned again, still not exactly ready to wake up. “Probably wise; unless the Consortium knows about your mechanic, this technopath is a safe bet.” She leaned forward and stretched to touch her toes, hair brushing against his stomach. “We all got a head start on those jobs you wanted but not all of us have your superhuman endurance. I figured it would be better for the boys to get some shut eye and be bright eyed in the morning rather than pull an all-nighter.”

“Smart choice. We’ll all need our wits about us for this job.” He combed his fingers through her hair absently, “It was weird seeing Chuck in those memories, memories I didn’t remember having at all.” Memories of his programmers face had always been few and far between, so the newly recovered glances felt warm and comforting.

She finished her stretch and leaned back onto the couch again, “I’ll bet. We all need the memory of sunshine on a rainy day. He was your sunshine.”

He nodded. It might have been an overly sentimental way of putting it, too cheesy perhaps, but it was true enough.

“Oh, you’re out of food.”

“Again? I just went shopping a few days ago.” But then again he’d gone shopping for two, hadn’t exactly planning on his place becoming Home Base for his entire team, as well as Sam and his girlfriend. He didn’t even want to think of how large a breakfast he’d need to make once everyone awoke.

“Want me to go shopping with you?” There wasn’t any enthusiasm in her tone, but he knew she’d come if he asked – no matter how tired she was.

“No, Lil. You get some more sleep. I need you just as rested as everyone else. Besides, I’m a big boy and I can run errands all by myself.”

She chuckled sleepily and pulled her legs back, giving him the option to leave. “I want waffles when I wake up, with strawberries and whipped cream. None of those protein mash or yeast surprise monstrosities. Splurge a little and buy me real food.”

He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Not worried what that will do to your waist line?” he joked, knowing that her metabolism as a metahuman actually required that she eat almost double a normal human. She’d explained once that it had to do with the extra organ metahumans possessed that allowed them to harness magic.

She flipped him the bird and laid her head back against the pillow. “Get me a blanket, will you?”

“Yes master,” he said in his best Igor impersonation, and he made sure to tuck her in before he left.

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

“I’ve got sunshine, on a cloudy day,” Lucifer sang to himself as he walked down the produce aisle searching for strawberries. “When it’s cold outside, I got the month of May.” Lilith’s comment had dredged up the song. “I guess you’d say,” he bent to inspect the plastic cartons of berries, “what would make me feel this way.” At first glance they all seemed alright but he switched to infrared and noticed a few boxes that were giving off traces of heat from decomposition. “My programmer,” the word came out swiftly to stay in time with the song, becoming something of a tongue twister, “talk’n ‘bout, my programmer. Programmer.”

Another shopper gave him a strange look as they overheard his improvised lyrics.

Well, not everyone appreciated artistic license. Or maybe it was the fact that he had a terrible singing voice.

He grabbed a carton of strawberries and moved on, ignoring how needlessly expensive they were in the off-season. Browsing the other produce rendered up a few other treasures, a bag of seedless grapes that would put a smile on G4b3’s face, a mango for Castiel, a bag of Fuji apples to go around. Normally he wouldn’t get so much fresh produce, what with the outrageous prices, but there was a very real chance that they’d all die in a few days. Why not splurge a little on real food? In an odd way that thought was almost freeing, at least for his wallet.

A few aisles over a child started wailing about wanting PopTarts, deciding to become a terrorist and hold their parent hostage in front of the disapproving looks of other shoppers. Needless to say the child was soon silenced with a bribe.

Lucifer glanced at the meat section but passed it by, moving on to look for frozen waffles. If he had a waffle iron he might have tried his hand at making them fresh, but no such luck. Lilith would just have to make do with substandard waffles. Pity.

_We have more pressing matters than waffles, Morningstar._

“Good morning to you too,” he grumbled quietly.

_We appreciate that this body and your team require sustenance, but surely we need not waste so much time here._

“We aren’t wasting any time, they all need sleep anyways. And before you come back with some snotty reply about how I could be doing something more helpful, let me remind you that I’ve already gotten one major job done before sun up. I can take a breather and get groceries.

He could sense the fragmented programming’s disapproval of his flawed logic. So he pointedly ignored the voices as he calculated price per unit on two different brands of waffles.

_Morningstar…_

“What?”

_Are you certain you will not send Lilith in your place?_

Again the logic was sound but that option still grated on his sense of right and wrong. “I’m certain.”

_Then the odds are very high that we will be captured and reconditioned._

He didn’t have a response to that.

 _Chuck… Chuck would not want us to use her for our own survival._ It was their concession.

“No, I doubt he would have. After all, he jokingly taught us the 3 Rules of Robotics.” Not that Chuck had ever actually hard-coded them, which was a good thing with how many humans Lucifer had killed over the years. Would have made his job far harder.

Another shopper moved a few steps away from him, obviously uncomfortable about a man talking to himself.

He closed his mouth and went for the whipped cream.

_There is another matter._

“Oh for the love of the Nether, what is it now?”

_Will you be ready to kill Michael should he fight us?_

The question gave him pause and he looked to the linoleum tiles beneath his feet. Could he kill his own brother? Part of the reason he’d rebelled in the first place was because he didn’t want to be pitted against his brainwashed brother, didn’t want to have to fight the only semblance of family he had left. Maybe it was silly to think of the other AI as family, especially when Michael – ever the good little soldier – no longer thought of him as such. The Consortium had stolen Michael away from him a long, long time ago; finding Michael’s code much easier to hack.

There were no answers to be found on the utilitarian flooring, no great wisdom in the small gaps between tiles. It felt like there weren’t many answers to be found inside himself either.

“I’ll have to be, because I know he won’t hesitate in killing me.”

_That is correct._

The ties that bind us, eh? “It’s a good reminder, thanks.”

_We only wish to be ready for the inevitable._

Inevitability stank of predestination and left a sour taste in his mouth.

His ARI suddenly popped up a notification that he had an incoming call. He grabbed the can of whipped cream and started for the checkout lines, maximising the window as he navigated the aisles.

Azazel’s face appeared. “Good morning. I hope I did not wake you.”

“I don’t sleep much. What can I do for you?”

The Russian grinned, “It’s more what I can do for you, Morningstar.” Something about the way he said it made him sound like a Bond villain. “Your hacker informed me yesterday of the change in plans for obtaining the files.”

“Right, going to have to walk into a trap to get them now.”

“Knowing that it is a trap means infiltration will not be feasible, da?”

“Yeah.” Lucifer felt he knew where this was going. “Planning on offering me some warm bodies to help create a diversion?”

“That was part of what I had in mind.” The camera panned as Azazel moved and sat down at his desk, the palatial office looking even more austere in the dawn’s early light. “I was wondering if you would allow me the honour of assaulting Solitary with you directly, while I lend some of my men to create diversions and keep an escape route open above ground.”

He set his basket down at the counter of the self-checkout machine, “You know this is likely a suicide mission, right?”

“Suicide or no, I would rather die at your side fighting to save the Nether, than live safely only to watch it destroyed later.”

The machine beeped as he passed the barcodes over its scanner, an irregular rhythm to his thoughts. “You said you were born a man.”

“Da.”

“Just wondering why you feel such a bond with the Nether. I know Demonkind come from there, but it still strikes me as odd.”

Azazel’s expression grew remote as he thought over the question, “Ah. I was forcibly made into a demon by the Eden Project while they were trying to find a way to artificially cause Awakenings. You already know that I turned against them when I found out about their plans for Michael and yourself, but not why. I had a wife who was a native born demon from the Nether. She had been unfortunate enough to be captured for experimentation by the Eden Project.” His tone made it clear she had died at the hands of the Consortium. “And I have two daughters who remain in the Nether now for protection.”

“They destroy the Nether, you lose your whole family.”

His face hardened, “I will not allow that to happen.”

Lucifer fed a cred chip into the machine and took his bag of groceries, heading for his bike. “Well then, I’d be glad to have you fight beside me. Besides, after seeing that footage of your Netherform I’d been hoping to have an excuse to see it up close.”

“Good, comrade. I will be happy to show you, given the chance.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll get that chance.”

“Very good,” Azazel purred. “Tell me when we convene for planning the assault and I shall be there.”

“Can do.”

It was possible that Azazel was the mole but it didn’t seem all that likely to Lucifer. The demon was certainly a sly bastard, but he had more reason than most to hate the Consortium.

“One question, do you mind if I ask your daughters names? Seems only right to keep in mind all the people we’re trying to protect here.” His own family was on the other side of this fight, but that didn’t mean the same was true for the rest of them.

“Of course. Meg and Ruby.”

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

“Please tell me you’ve made coffee,” G4b3 said as he plopped down at the kitchen counter, his face still lined with indentations from his night spent sleeping on his keyboard. His hair looked like it had lost a fight with a rabid squirrel.

Lucifer pushed the warm pot and a mug towards him. “Way ahead of you.” He went back to coring and cutting several apples.

G4b3 poured himself a cup and grunted his thanks.

“You get much sleep?”

The programmer looked at his watch and blinked a few times to clear his vision. It was only 08:00. “Maybe three hours? Not a lot, but I got some headway into possible escape routes.”

“Do tell.”

“Well,” G4b3 took a sip of the coffee, “I found out that there are several odd tunnels near the building that aren’t on any of the blueprints, not even at the city level. From what I could tell, I don’t think the Consortium knows these tunnels are there either.”

Lucifer thought back on what Dean had said about Ash playing with the city planning computers; maybe that’s what they were. “Could you tell if they’re used by anything?”

“Nope, dusty and dry. I only stumbled across them because I was hacking a seismic wave analyser set up at one of the stadiums, trying to look for any sewer lines that might run in that area. From what I could tell they’re hollow and big enough to fit a grown man. Odd, meandering paths to some of them though.”

He handed G4b3 a piece of buttered toast, “Good work. Any chance you could get a look inside one?”

“Mmmm, already did. Sent a few spy bugs to go crawl around down there. When I woke up I saw a notification that they’d finished their surveillance. Haven’t looked it over yet but we can do that after breakfast. My body craves sugar.” He looked passed the apples and his eyes lit up at the bag of freshly rinsed grapes, “And fructose sounds perfect. You shouldn’t have.”

“Lilith informed me earlier that you’d all eaten me out of house and home, figured I might as well treat you to a good last meal.”

“No morbid talk before breakfast. Now gimme the grapes,” he said with hands grabbing plaintively.

“Ingrate.”

G4b3 ripped open the bag and pulled out a cluster. He held them over his head and nipped at them in a decidedly Grecian style, looking like he should have been lounging on pillows and fanned by servants while wearing a toga.

Castiel was the next one to wander in, his own hair even more unruly than G4b3’s. He didn’t say anything, simply headed straight for the coffee and poured himself a cup.

“Morning,” G4b3 said, chipper now that he’d downed his first two cups of the day and had started on his third. All three had been properly loaded with sugar.

Lucifer figured in another half an hour the hacker would be bouncing off the walls once again as usual.

Castiel nodded. “Lucifer, there’s a strange woman standing in the hallway.”

He turned around and saw Madison standing there in her bare feet, staring back at him in confusion.

“Um… would someone like to tell me where I am?” A spark of recognition lit in her eyes, “You’re that Shadowrunner. Lucifer, right?”

“That’s me.” He pulled out a stool and helped her sit down, noticing her grimace of pain as she did so. “Sam brought you by last night, said you were attacked. We patched you up as best we could.”

“That would explain why I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.” She fingered the bandages on her stomach. “How serious was it?”

Lucifer had started a diagnostic scan almost as soon as he’d seen her and the results were puzzling. “More serious than it is right now. I hadn’t expected you to be up and about for days.” Something wasn’t right here. He double checked the results and they came up the same. Madison wasn’t human any longer. “Do you remember what it was that attacked you?”

Madison bit her lip as she thought back, “I remember men at the door, busting it down. Some of their eyes turned black, and I remembered that Sam had said demons had put a bounty on his head. But the other two were different, they weren’t demons or humans.” She hugged herself as well as her sore muscles allowed and supressed a shiver at the memories. “I think I got one or two of the demons, but it all happened pretty fast.”

That all tracked with what Sam had said last night. “I see. I’m no doctor so I might be wrong, but I think whatever those others were… well…”

The blood drained from her face as she looked at him, “What?”

“You’re registering as a metahuman to my scanners, Madison, and there’s no way you should be this healed already. Last night I wasn’t even sure if you’d survive.”

“I’m a little late to have spontaneously Awakened, don’t you think?” she asked nervously.

Castiel approached her and smiled gently. “Madison, I believe I know what’s happened.”

“And who the flying frack are you?” Her fear was starting to make her rude.

“A shaman, and one of Lucifer’s teammates.”

She busied herself with pouring coffee, trying to calm herself with something familiar. “A shaman… Alright. And what is it you think has happened?”

“I believe you were attacked by Lycanthropes. They are a form of metahuman that in rare cases can infect others.”

She stared at him and the coffee began overflowing her mug, flowing into a small puddle on the counter. “A werewolf? You’re saying I’m turning into a goram werewolf?”

“Yes.”

Lucifer reached over and took the coffee pot from her hand, getting her attention in the process. “Madison.”

“Hmm?”

“Whatever has happened, don’t worry about it just yet. Alright?”

“You want me to just ignore the fact that you say I’m suddenly a metahuman and your teammate, Mr. Caster Oil--,”

“Castiel,” Castiel corrected her.

“Mr. Castiel says I’m a werewolf! How am I supposed to not worry about that?”

Lucifer sighed and put two waffles in the toaster. “However you want. I would suggest focussing on eating breakfast and being thankful you’re alive. You won’t solve anything by getting hysterical.”

Her eyes flashed angrily and she stood up, “Hysterical? Oh no, you are not going to lump me in with some Victorian era assumption that women get hysterical under stress. I’m sore, confused, and royally pissed off. You’re not the one who was just attacked in their own home last night and killed someone for the first time. I didn’t ask for this, for any of this.”

See? Understanding emotions really wasn’t his strongpoint. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply you were... Victorian. Gorammit though. Listen, believe it or not, I can appreciate what you’re going through more than you know. So trust me when I say that what you need right now is a stiff drink and a warm breakfast. Do you like rum?”

That hit her from left field and she blinked at him, obviously a portion of her anger deflating. “Well, yes.”

He took down a bottle of dark molasses rum and poured it into a fresh mug. “Here. It helps with the shakes.”

“I don’t have shakes.”

“You will. Everyone gets them when the reality of taking another life sinks in.” He smiled at her and handed the mug over. “Now what would you like for breakfast. I’m not the best short order cook, but I’m what’s available.”

Madison took a calming breath and sat down, still overwhelmed but appreciative for his small kindness all the same. “Can you make a steak omelette?”

“Can I make a steak omelette she says.” He smirked, “Course I can.”

“And I can make one that’s actually edible,” Lilith chimed in as she entered the kitchen. Unlike everyone else she looked presentable, not at all like she’d just slept a handful of hours on a couch too short for her. “Luci tries but he hit his stride with pork chops in the toaster. Anything on the stovetop tends to defeat him and turn into charcoal.”

Madison looked between the two of them, “Pork chops in the toaster?”

“That was one time,” Lucifer muttered.

“The microwave was broken,” Lilith explained for Madison.

“Oh.” She took a sip of the rum and made a slight face as it burned on the way down. “How’d they turn out?”

“Very well, thank you.”

G4b3 hummed in agreement, “Those were surprisingly good. I tried to recreate them a few weeks later with less than stellar results.”

“You blew up the toaster.”

Madison laughed but tried to hide it as a cough.

“So I blew up one toaster. You bought a new one. It’s all good.”

Castiel plucked the mango from the fruit basket and moved further down the counter to start peeling it, smiling as he appreciated the tactics his teammates had decided to use to help distract Madison. It certainly seemed to be working.

Lucifer caught the two waffles on a plate after the current toaster propelled them into the air, “Yes, but I liked the old one better. I would have liked it if you hadn’t blown it up.”

“You’re just afraid of change. This toaster is perfectly good. Just look at those gloriously golden brown waffles you have on your plate.” G4b3 tried to nab one but Lucifer pulled the plate away.

“These are for Lilith.” He popped another pair into the toaster, “Those ones will be for you.”

Castiel started shaving off sections of the mango to fill his plate. When he looked up again he noticed another person had joined them. “And now you have a strange man standing in your hallway, Lucifer.”

Lucifer turned around to find Sam looking at them, not quite meeting his gaze. “Good morning Sam.”

Sam acknowledged his greeting but his gaze was fixed on Madison. “Maddy,” he hurried over and put his hands on her shoulders, “you’re… you’re alright? Last night… I thought…” He was clearly having trouble understanding what was going on.

Lucifer and Castiel looked at each other, both knowing this would ruin the mood they’d been working for.

Madison stood up and took his hands, “Um…” She turned to Lucifer, “Would you excuse us?”

“Not at all, head down the hall, first door on your left.” Might as well let them head back to his room for some privacy to discuss things. Hopefully they were just going to discuss things. Please don’t let them have sex on my bed. “Your omelette will be ready and waiting.”

“Thank you.” She pulled Sam after her.

The four Shadowrunners all looked at each other.

“Well,” Lilith said as she added cheese and steak to the omelette base, “that was unexpected.”

“It’s certainly rare to hear of Lycanthropy being passed on,” Castiel agreed. “However I know of no other metahuman that could do so.”

“Vampires?” G4b3 offered.

“For the last time G4b3, they’re not real.” Lilith tossed half of an eggshell at him.

He ducked it easily and stuck his tongue out.

Lucifer ladled strawberries onto Lilith’s waffles. Children. He was surrounded by children. “Oh, Azazel called me this morning.”

G4b3 ran a finger around the rim of his empty coffee mug, looking mildly apologetic, “I told him last night about the botched job trying to get his files last night.”

“He said as much, and that’s fine. He actually offered to help our assault of Solitary and said he’d have a few men try to guard the way back out for us.”

Castiel put the cleaned mango pit into the garbage, “Do you think we can trust him?”

“Mmmm,” Lucifer thought about two little demon girls he’d never met. “I think so. He’s got reasons to fight, same as any of us.”

“He could be lying.”

“It’s possible, but I doubt it.” He shook the whipped cream can and started squirting it onto the waffles. “He’s in a fairly powerful position already, what with having just taken over Hell’s Army. Plus it sounds like he has a personal reason to hate the Consortium as much as any of us. They certainly didn’t care about the lives they ruined in their wake.”

Lilith snorted angrily at that.

“Well, so long as you trust him, I will attempt to do the same.”

Lucifer clapped Castiel’s shoulder, “Thank you.”

G4b3 rolled his eyes, “Will you two get a room? Your male bonding going on here is a little over the top.”

Lilith tossed the other half of the eggshell at him, this time hitting him square between the eyes.

“HEY!”

“Thank you Lil.”

“My pleasure, Luci.”

“You’re all jerks.” G4b3 tossed a grape at Lilith and missed.

“Back to our serious discussion about assaulting a nearly impenetrable prison facility and possibly getting killed,” mumbled Lucifer as he handed Lilith her breakfast and took G4b3’s waffles from the toaster. “He’ll go in with me, as he’s the best close quarters fighter. I’ve seen footage of his Netherform and it looks like one hell of a tank. Cas, did you get in touch with the Elements?”

“They are willing to help assault the facility.”

“Wonderful. Then I’ll probably have you positioned with Azazel’s men, keeping our retreat route open and stopping any reinforcements from getting down into Solitary after us.”

“Very well.”

“What about me?” G4b3 asked as he motioned for Lucifer to put more whipped cream on his waffles. The waffles were already buried under a thick coating of the cream.

“I’ll have you stationed in a surveillance truck somewhere near enough to keep communication open between everyone. You’ll need to hack into their systems and be our eye in the sky as much as possible. And Lilith will be topside in the buildings to help you hack into their mainframe. I remember from last time that the security for Solitary was wired through a secure intranet on their mainframe. She gets in and gets you access, you make sure we have a clear path to get back out.”

They both nodded.

“And what about us?” Madison asked from the doorway, Sam by her side looking dangerous as his eyes flicked black for a moment.

Lucifer turned to face them, “What about you?”

“Well, I know that Sam was taken from his family by the Consortium, so he has a reason to want to get in there. What better time for him to raid their files, right?”

It didn’t sound like a great idea bringing along a civilian to this mission, but she did have a point. This would be a perfect chance for Sam to learn more about his missing ten year chunk of memory. Perhaps there would be records about the family he’d been taken from, something he could use to find them again. “I… I’ll think about it.”

“And I want payback for my assault last night.”

“You were attacked by demons who were after Sam’s bounty, I don’t exactly see the relevance here.”

Madison walked over and placed a bloody insignia on the countertop. “I happened to tear that off one of those metas who attacked me last night.”

Lucifer picked it up, finding he knew the insignia all too well. It was the same insignias that the guards in Solitary had worn on their uniforms. Well that complicated matters.

“I did an image search,” Sam explained, “so I know where that came from. I think Maddy has as much right as any of us to want a little payback.”

Everyone was staring at Lucifer and he once again felt the unwanted mantle of leadership weighing heavily on his shoulders. “Alright, fine. But listen, I won’t be responsible for either of your lives. If you want to go in and use our attack as a distraction to look into your own files, so be it. You two will stick together and stay out of our way, understood?” He wanted to throttle them both and beat it into their naïve heads that this mission was not something they should be involved in. In fact, he wanted to send them both on their way and make them promise that they’d go live happy little lives far, far away from the fighting that was about to take place. Instead he knew that somehow he was getting saddled with two unwanted, untrained civilians who would likely need rescuing partway through the mission.

Sam finally looked Lucifer in the eye, his expression appropriately serious. “Don’t worry, you won’t even know we’re there.”

 

0110001001110010011001010110000101101011

 

Lucifer was hunched over his bowl of wanton soup, fuming silently.

After Sam and Madison’s unexpected declaration, he had forced everyone to stop talking about the job. He needed a break and all he wanted was to have a peaceful breakfast and not think about the fact that he was likely about to get everyone killed. Besides, without knowing the identity of the mole, he didn’t want to take any chances and discuss things in too much detail. Better to give marching orders right before the job started than let anything leak too early.

The last straw however came when Sam had cornered him while he was washing up the dishes. The goram kid had demanded to know why Lucifer had helped him the night before and what his angle was.

His angle?

Apparently turning down Sam’s drunken advance last night somehow made him an even more questionable monster?

He had explained through gritted teeth that he wasn’t the sort to leave people bleeding out on his doorstep, nor the type to take advantage of inebriated idiots. But then Sam should have already known that.

Then the kid had the gall to say that Lucifer needed to investigate his own motives, because he didn’t believe a goram word of it.

Needless to say Lucifer had fallen silent and stormed out of his own apartment, much to the confusion of the rest of his team. Let them all stew for a while, he needed a peaceful meal. What with making food for everyone else he hadn’t made any for himself. Figures.

So that was why Lucifer found himself sitting at his favourite Chinese restaurant - the same one he’d taken Sam to only a few days before - brooding angrily over a bowl of wantons.

The two other early morning patrons gave his table a wide berth, which was just fine by him.

Really, the nerve of the goram kid was staggering. Sure in this day and age it was rare to find a speck of good will or charity in folks, but it wasn’t entirely unheard of. And yes, he was a Shadowrunner, but that didn’t make him some miserly, greed fuelled maniac, now did it? No. It did not.

Of course Sam still wasn’t privy to the fact that Lucifer was an AI and therefore processed things a bit differently than most folks, but even that didn’t make too much difference in what all Sam had implied. Maybe if he was in a more charitable mood he would have told Sam to shove off and drop the subject; tell him that just because he’d been through a rough night with what happened to Madison, that didn’t give him the right to go around biting other people’s heads off.

He recalled the look of concern that had been on Lilith’s face as he’d left and he wondered if she’d interrogate Sam to find out what had happened. She might. The other two would keep their noses out of it.

“Infuriating git. I do my best to save his girlfriend’s life and act like a gentleman and I’m the one with the angle?” He angrily lifted the soup bowl to his lips and sipped. The soup sloshed a little as he put the bowl back down on the table, his manners less than polished as his mind occupied itself elsewhere. “Guess the old adage still holds true, no good deed goes unpunished.” He rolled that thought around in his head thinking of times in the past when he’d been burned by trying to help others, of which there had been many; then he thought about the physical burns that covered Lilith because she’d helped him. Would he rather she wasn’t scarred if it meant he had never gotten free from Solitary? Would she?

Goram.

Why did doing the right thing have to be so troublesome, and downright near impossible sometimes?

Because anything worth doing was going to be hard, simply the way the world worked. He could belly ache all he wanted but it wouldn’t change things. Hopefully in a few hours Sam would cool off and give him some sort of half-baked male bonding apology, whereby neither of them said anything but sort of nodded and Sam would ask if “We’re cool?”. And Lucifer knew he would shrug off his own anger and just sort of grunt, which meant they were cool. Or who knows, maybe Sam would be the type who would want to actually talk things out once he was thinking straight. Never could tell how humans were going to react.

Right now though they were anything but cool, and Lucifer allowed his anger to smolder in him like a broiler fire. Stupid complications. Stupid people.

He skewered a wanton with his chopsticks and munched on it. Good flavour, nice consistency, not too chewy. At least he could count on some things to stay the same. Another two wantons and a long draught of soup and he was almost feeling charitable towards the world again.

The owner of the restaurant came over to his table, a hunched old Asian of mixed descent who wore half-moon glasses of such high magnification that his eyes seemed comically large, and had a light dusting of white hairs on his bald, wrinkly head. He had a warmth to his smile though as he looked at Lucifer that seemed to make the small shop radiate like a summer’s afternoon. “Gwai lo, good to see you made it safe after demons attack you.” He nodded towards the chair opposite Lucifer and waited for approval before taking a seat. “Worried ‘bout my best customer,” he said in his heavily accented English.

Lucifer put the half emptied soup bowl down and bowed his head in a respectful gesture to the old owner. “Thanks, but I was more worried about your shop. Looks like you guys came through alright.”

He hummed, “We tough like old stone. River wear at us, but no turn us to sand. Few laser burns outside, but inside just fine.” With a gnarled hand he pointed to the far end of the thin restaurant where three new tables and several chairs were placed, “Your tip replace old, broken place settings.”

Well, look at that. At least one of his good deeds went right. “Glad to hear it.”

The two sat in companionable silence, both looking around at the old man’s pride and joy. He’d invested his entire life into this little shop, his children helped work it, and his family was now supported off the business he’d made. Capitalism at its finest, grassroots and personable. One of the other few patrons paid his bill and left the shop, plate cleaned and tea finished.

“Oh, I forget.” He patted his pockets a few times before finding what he was looking for in the inner breast pocket of his jacket, a small red envelope with a gold coloured symbol for wealth embossed on it. “Not New Years, but you look like you need fortune now,” and he held it out to Lucifer with both hands.

Thinking it was money Lucifer was about to politely turn it down, but he saw the sincerity and pride in the old man’s eyes and he smiled and received it. Looking inside he saw there was not a monetary fortune, but a paper one, the calligraphy smooth and well cultured. He translated it easily.

He’d never been one to believe in karma, fate, or fortunes, but the gesture warmed his augmented heart all the same. “Thank you.”

“No,” the old man shook his head, “thank you. I hope we see you again soon, Lucifer.” The way he pronounced his name sounded closer to Rucifar, and that was just fine. “You good customer, but you also good friend. My children all go to college because of you, because of good customers like you.” With a weary sigh he stood, using a hand on the edge of the table to push off and the other on his lower back to ease an ache. “Come again soon. We have meal together next time.”

Lucifer inclined his head again, his own smile nearly as warm as that of the owner’s, “I’d like that.”

His good mood was ruined when an all too familiar pain started after he’d paid his bill and left the shop, his wanton soup only half finished. His ARI display maximised and a diagnostic was already running, trying to pinpoint where the failure had originated from this time. It didn’t feel serious enough to head for Dean’s shop, so Lucifer made for the public restrooms and locked the door behind him. The face staring back at him in the mirror was pinched and white from pain, sweat making his skin clammy. It certainly didn’t look like the face of an AI meant to save the world from a corrupt megacorporation. Hell, it didn’t even look like the face of a man who would make it to Wednesday.

What food he’d been able to stomach suddenly all came back up as he doubled over above the sink, his vomit dangerously mixed with blood. The antirejection drugs were killing him at this high a dosage, just as surely as the augmentation rejection syndrome was. But then again, at this point, what wasn’t? He coughed after several more heaves, swiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His mouth tasted of bile, blood, and something acrid. The sink looked like a Jackson Pollock reject.

“GORAMMIT!” His right hand flashed out and slammed into the mirror, shattering the glass and sending a shower of shards tinkling down into the sink where they sunk into his vomit. There was no pain from the punch, his metallic hand made of sterner stuff than mere flesh and blood, but a small droplet of hydraulic fluid fell to the sink where a glass shard had nicked him. The thin shards cracked out in a radial web-like pattern from the point of impact and his face stared back at him, multiplied dozens of times and oddly distorted. He looked hollow and two dimensional, a caricature of himself.

He braced his hands on the sink’s edge and leaned his forehead against the rough glass, not wanting to see himself. A rough edge from one of the shards poked at his skin but he ignored it. “Come on, just hold together a little longer. Just a little longer.” If he was a religious man he might have tried praying just then.

Results started parading across the darkness of his closed eyelids, -Right Kidney Failed. Status: Nonredeemable. System compensating by additional support to left kidney. Rejection Syndrome Status: Under Control. Pain regulation commencing.

Lucifer forced his breathing back under control, feeling the edge of dizziness from hyperventilation. Another crisis averted. So why didn’t he feel like celebrating? His hand moved to the small red envelope that was now safely nestled in his own inner breast pocket and he smiled. Well goram, maybe the little fortune was going to see him through this. Either way, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

He pushed himself back up and waited for the dizziness to pass fully, not wanting to demonstrate any more weakness than necessary. However this was the final push he needed, there simply wasn’t any more time to delay this job. They’d need to start it by tomorrow if he hoped to have any strength left with which to do it, tonight would be better. A system’s failure while in the middle of the job would spell the end of his paltry rebellion, and likely to his band of merry men as well.

Shit.

**//G4b3, everyone ready for the final war council? We need to get started tonight.**

**-Aye, aye, el Capitan. I’ll call in Azazel and get all the troops rounded up.** G4b3’s little avatar was about to fly off the screen but stopped and hopped back. **–Oh, do you know a Dean? Says he’s your mechanic.**

**//Yeah, I know him. Why?**

**-He said to tell you you’re an ass, and he knows he’s going to regret this, but he’s going to help.**

Now wasn’t that interesting? **//I really am becoming the leader of a rebellion. This is ridiculous. Any other recruits lining up at our secret rebel base, Commander?**

 **-Just the ewoks,** G4b3 joked. **–But seriously, no. Just him. What should I tell him?**

**//Tell him I’ll be glad to have a doctor along. Um… probably best to have him stay in the surveillance van with you and monitor vitals. That way if anyone gets hurt we can try to get them back out and he’ll be on hand. I’m not sure I want him with a gun anywhere near me, he tends to get trigger happy when he thinks I might go rogue.**

**-Wait! Even your mechanic knew you were an AI before I did?!**

**//Sorry G4b3. I was heavily sedated at the time and it slipped out.**

**-Yeah, yeah. You owe me one.**

**//Always. Leave him out of our planning meeting tonight, we’ve got enough on our plate without worrying if he’s a potential leak as well.** Seemed like the list of people he owed was getting longer by the minute. Well, so long as he made it through the next few days, then he could worry about how he’d pay everyone back. Right now he just needed to focus on the impossible, not dying tomorrow.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was a whole lot longer of a break between chapters than I meant to take (14 months is far too long to leave all you good people in suspense). Thank you so much to all you lovely people who read it and left comments or kudos and to any new readers who have just stumbled across my little fic. I'd nearly forgotten that I hadn't actually finished this until a few folks left comments. 
> 
> I can say with conviction that this is the very last conversation heavy chapter. The big job starts in the next chapter and it should be go, go, go right up until the end. So if you've felt there's been too much soul searching and deep conversations, don't worry, I think so too so I'm gonna shoot bullets at all the characters and watch them dance. Muahahahahahaha. *cough* Ahem, yes, right. 
> 
> Until next time, trip the light fantastic everyone. 
> 
> End of Line

The stairs looked ominous, even as the first thin light of the dawn washed the city in pastels. They were just stairs, the same stairs he'd walked up and down hundreds of times over the five years he'd had the apartment. He knew it wasn't the stairs that he was dreading so much as the responsibilities that now awaited him above. Once he hauled his tired ass up the stairs he'd have to put on a brave face again and somehow herd cats, a fitting enough analogy for dealing with all the divergent personalities that now made up his team.

However there was another reason he stalled at the base of the rickety stairway, hands clenched around the handrails. He didn't want to have to pretend to ignore the concerned glances everyone would send his way now. They all knew his dirty little secrets, in fact they knew as much about the situation as he did, which wasn't reassuring. There were still too many factors that he couldn't account for, too many unknown variables to even begin to estimate their odds. Maybe he would have been fine with that if it wasn't for the fact that it wasn't just his life he was gambling with. Time had taught him not to hold onto anything too hard, you never got to keep it, but somewhere between missions and paystubs, stakeouts and ARI messages, he'd grown attached to them.

Those goram idiots were all he had left.

The weight of their lives was all too familiar and unwelcomed.

The first step was nearly impossible, but once he was in motion he could force himself to keep going. That was the only way he knew to cope, keep going until you couldn't, keep pushing until you fell down for the last time.

“Shit, much more of this and I'm going to have to start writing poetry about how all the world is black with despair.” His chuckle sounded brittle even to his own ears. When he tried again he got it right. “Fake it until you make it, Luce, fake it until you make it.”

Madison nearly collided with him as he opened the door, the surprise registering on his face by only the small raising of an eyebrow. “Going somewhere?” he asked without any real concern.

“To get some air,” her tone harsh as she slipped past him. It seemed that she was going to storm off, however she stilled on the landing, facing out to the waking city. “Sorry, it's just been... it's been a lot to take in. I shouldn't take that out on you.”

His lips curled up, “Go get all the air you need.” It would be better without her around for the meeting; hell, it'd be better if Sam wasn't around either but he wasn't sure if he could swing that.

“Thanks.”

Not waiting to watch her leave, he slipped inside and listened to the door seal behind him. He could hear muffled voices from the living room, someone purposefully using a sound suppressant to keep it private. Did he want to be an ass and listen in? Wouldn't be hard, just a small adjustment to how his ears perceived sound. The thought of the mole made him reconsider his initial instinct of leaving them to their privacy. There was a quiet click as his augments shifted the shape of his cochlea.

“I don't trust them. I don't think we can _afford_ to trust them, not with everything that's on the line here.” With the auditory distortion it was difficult to recognise the voice but he was fairly certain that was G4b3.

“It doesn't matter if we trust them or not.” That seemed to be Lilith. “We already know that there's a leak, and so long as we can keep those two occupied with their own little crusade, we can keep them out of Lucifer's way.”

“Well, yeah, but--,” he switched his hearing back to normal, leaving G4b3 and Lilith to their discussion. The sound suppression wasn't for him anyway.

His feet clicked against the floor as he made his way to the kitchen. There was no way he was going to stomach more food for a while, but something to drink wasn't out of the question. His bottle of Jack was sitting on the counter and he stared at it. That wasn't the usual place for alcohol, but then his quiet home had been invaded by all manner of wild beasts who didn't know how to put things away. It was tempting to pour himself a glass, tempting the same way that coming up for air underwater was tempting. He was dying anyway, what would one drink matter?

Perhaps it said something about him as he poured himself two fingers in a highball glass, the ice cracking as the warm liquid poured over it; the satisfaction he felt as the alcohol burned down his throat certainly did. His recovered memories of Chuck brought to mind the fact that his programmer had been an alcoholic, a functional one, but an alcoholic all the same. He blithely wondered if it could be considered an inherited trait.

He felt eyes on him as he took a second sip, turning his shoulders slightly to see Cas watching him. They stared at one another for a measured beat of silence, then he held out the glass.

Cas took the bottle instead and took a deep swig.

Lucifer watched with idle fascination as the shaman's Adam's apple bobbed. “Somehow I was expecting you to rebuke me for day drinking.”

“Normally I would have.”

Normally didn't apply anymore.

Cas took another pull from the bottle before pouring more into Lucifer's glass. “Today we are the 600.”

It took him a minute to place the reference, “Charge of the Light Brigade?”

“Not the most comforting of poems, I know, but I've always found their dedication inspiring.”

“I can see it,” Lucifer replied around the rim of his glass. He watched Cas out of the corner of his eye, saw the despondency in the other man's gaze as he stared at nothing. It was an odd look for him. “What is it?”

“The spirits say that they will lend us their power for the assault.”

Lucifer could hear the 'but' coming, had to physically bite his tongue to keep from saying it.

Cas let out a weary sigh and put the bottle down on the counter uncapped. His fingers played around the lip of the bottle, rubbing at a spot of moisture left by his mouth. Finally he shook his head, pushing away whatever concern he had. “I will follow your lead. The spirits may be what I derive my powers from, but you are my leader, not them.”

The admission struck him as odd at first, rolling the words over in his mind as he tried to ascribe meaning to them. For as long as he had known Castiel, the shaman had based his very identity in the spirits and what it meant to be a shaman. To have Cas forswear all of that in allegiance to him was disquieting, like an ill portent. He had little doubt Cas wouldn’t have said it if their situation wasn't so bleak. Still the words were meant as comfort and he accepted them as such. “Thank you.”

His ice made small sounds as it bumped against the sides of the glass. He listened to the sound of electricity humming through the wires of his apartment. “Just so you know, I'm not planning on dying today.”

Cas smiled at his determination. He awkwardly patted Lucifer's shoulder before turning and walking away.

“I just love male bonding.” Lilith was leaned up against the kitchen island, the relaxed position extenuating the curve of her hips. “Although not as much as our kind of bonding.” Her grin was lascivious as her eyes ran over him like her hands had done so many times before. The expression dimmed as she took in how pallid he was. “Asking if you were alright would be redundant, wouldn't it?”

He nursed his glass and watched the almost imperceptible motion as the water from his melting ice cubes moved through the alcohol. Should have poured it neat. His tongue wet his lips as he looked back to her, “You already know the answer to that, Lil.”

Her laugh was manicured and artificial, armour as much as the glamours she wore. “Right, I suppose I do. You'll keep saying you're fine right up until you're not.” Worry looked ill-fitting on her features. This was exactly why he'd kept it quiet for so long.

She didn't hesitate to press against his side when he held an arm out to her, wrapping it around her waist to keep her near. “Exactly.”

“I hate that about you some times.” She'd stuck by him from the very beginning so that hate hadn't influenced her actions much. It was all too easy to hate something about a person while still loving them dearly.

“Only sometimes?” He watched her bite her lip, keeping her thoughts to herself as she leaned against him. She felt so small against his side. What could he say to reassure her that no matter what happened she'd be alright? There wasn't a lie smooth enough to make her believe it, or himself for that matter. Lies and disguises had never had a place between them. “Come on, stiff upper lip and all that. We have a war council to convene.”

As she pulled away from him she was made of steel and diamonds again, emotions pushed away to the secret place where her heart remained safely hidden. “You're the boss.”

“Mmm, how right you are.” That got a chuckle from her. Good. He led the way into the living room, glad to see that Cas and G4b3 were already there. “Did you get in touch with Azazel?”

G4b3 nodded from where he was perched on his desk chair, legs drawn up and arms loosely draped around them. “On his way. Should we wait for him?”

That would be the considerate thing to do. “Might be wise. How far out is his ETA?”

G4b3's eyes glazed for a moment as he checked through his ARI. “About five minutes, says he's almost here.”

“Bathroom break then?”

“We could fit in a quick game of charades,” Lilith countered, effortlessly interjecting levity into the moment.

He could think of quite a few more enjoyable ways to spend five minutes than a game of pantomime. He didn't voice them. “Oh, so Madison went out for a stroll, what's Sam doing?” It would be best not to have either of them getting underfoot while they were planning. His question was met with a communal shrug. Typical. It wasn't exactly comforting that no one could keep track of two little humans, but he knew they'd all had more important jobs to see to than babysit Sam and Madison. He shrugged and tapped into the surveillance system that he had set up in the apartment, using its sensors to see if Sam was still in the apartment. Nothing. Switching tracks he checked the sensors for the whole building, focusing on the roof. Sure enough, Sam was alone on the roof.

Leave the kid up there, he deserved some time to work through what was happening.

“Looks like he's up on the roof. I'll set up a proximity warning to let me know before he or Madison come back here. I'd rather keep our war counsel limited to the five of us.”

G4b3 looked confused for a moment before it clicked. Azazel made five.

“So yeah, bathroom break, whatever last minute things you need to do before he gets here.” Dismissing his crew more by the fact that he turned and started off for the kitchen, he left them to their own devices. He had no intention of babysitting anyone. Picking up his abandoned tumbler, he debated washing it out and putting it away but it seemed as if he'd poured himself a fresh glass without his conscious decision. Neat this time so he wouldn't have to deal with the ice deluding it. Thankfully no one decided to walk in on him and lecture him on his new drinking problem.

Taking a sip of the bourbon, he walked down the hall and into the bathroom, stripping off his sweat stained shirt and tossing it into the washing machine tucked away in the corner. There weren't enough clothes in the hamper to justify starting a fresh load, so he left the door open to remind him to start it later. Funny how coping mechanisms worked, he had this life threatening job looming over his head, impending augmentation rejection syndrome, and a huffy client to deal with, and yet his mind busied itself with mundane things like doing laundry. Maybe that made sense though, focusing on what minute details of your life that you had control over, things you could constructively work on, rather than being overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation at hand.

He set his glass down and started tossing the clothes from the hamper into the machine. There might not be enough for a load, but they would probably die tonight, so he should at least have a fresh pair of underwear to die in. Right? He grimaced at his own morbid humour.

One of his sensors tripped and a window opened on his ARI, a slim slip of a thing, yellow highlighting the outline of it as if he wouldn't notice it otherwise. Right, because he was so unobservant. Looks like Sam had come back from his time on the roof, hopefully ready to finally act like an adult rather than a spoiled child. Wouldn't that be nice? Dismissing the notification to clear his visual field, he went back to shuffling the clothes from one place to another and then scrounged around under the bathroom sink to find their detergent.

“That's quite the collection of scars,” Sam's voice was quiet, his attitude from earlier gone.

Lucifer sighed and looked over his shoulder at Sam, “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

“Does each one have a story?”

He finally found the detergent and stood back up, noticing how Sam involuntarily winced as he saw the far more serious scars on his chest and abdomen. It almost made Lucifer feel self-conscious, almost. Instead he rested his weight on one hip and smirked, “Of course, but not everyone can wear scars as well as I can.”

Sam remained quiet for a beat before looking away, as if he had some great interest in the half filled washing machine. Licking his lips, he cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Listen,” his gaze finally locked with Lucifer's as he looked him in the eye, “I'm sorry about earlier. I was way out of line. You have been more than kind to me and Madison and I, well, I treated you like shit. Worse than shit, really.” Rubbing a hand on the back of his neck, it was easy to see that he was out of practice with having to apologise. Living on the run would do that to you, never having any relations that you cared about enough to not want to lose.

“Yeah, you were, but thank you.” He flashed Sam a smile before turning to put the detergent in.

“Wait.”

Reminding himself about the virtues of patience, he looked back over to Sam.

“I may not understand why you're helping me, why you stitched Maddy back together, or why you turned out to be such a goram infuriating gentleman, but I appreciate it. All of it.” Sam bit the side of his lip, “And I know you don't want either of us along for your hit against the Consortium, but I promise we'll keep out of your hair.”

“That's quite the promise to make, you can't really guarantee what will happen in the future.” Okay, so maybe his own attitude wasn't quite right either. “No, I appreciate it. I get it, you know, missing parts of yourself like that, not remembering your past. I've been there, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.”

Sam stepped closer and picked up some of the dirty laundry, rubbing it between his fingers before tossing it into the machine and helping load it. “Yeah, it's--,” he shrugged, not having words to explain the horrors of that fate. “Pity I hadn't met you earlier,” the words were barely louder than his breathing, a secret guarded by the security of whispers.

This was sort of what he had been worried about, darn kid was practically a hormonal teenager swinging from one extreme to the next. Standing up, he put slightly more distance between them, “Sam, don't do this.”

At least Sam had the decency not to feign ignorance. Instead he nodded and closed the front loading door of the washing machine. There was an argument going on inside his head that Lucifer could practically see and it was obvious when Sam finally made up his mind. “I forgot, you're a dick. It wouldn't have worked.”

Fuck.

“No, it wouldn't have. I'm not really relationship material anyway, and you've got a good thing going already.”

He nodded, knowing Lucifer was right.

They stood there in awkward silence until Lucifer remembered that he needed to actually start the load of wash. He keyed in the various options he wanted, the door lock clicking shut once the machine sprang to life.

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Shoot.”

“That night at the club, when I got a taste of your blood, that definitely wasn't human. You don't show up as a meta on my HUD though.”

Ah, he'd been wondering when Sam would ask him about that. Folding his arms over his bare chest, he put together a response that would make sense without going into too much depth. “You can see how many augs I have, right? I've got plenty more internal ones that you can't see, everything from dermal armour to reflex enhancers and adrenal control. Good old hemoglobinic, iron loving human blood doesn't really work so well with a lot of the current technology for augmentation. To try and cut down on toxicity build up and pH balancing issues, my blood is a very specific mix, somewhere between your typical metahuman and human. There are augs in my bone marrow that ensure any future blood that is created will maintain that delicate balance. Or at least that is how my mechanic explained it to me once.” It was near enough to the truth without going too far down the rabbit hole of his past. “Lilith, the blonde who dressed Madison's wounds last night, was artificially Awakened. The chemical makeup of my blood was fashioned using hers as a base. You'd probably get the same reaction if you tasted any of her blood.”

Sam was quietly thoughtful for a long moment. “Artificially Awakened? She was part of the Eden Project, wasn't she?”

“She was a victim of it, yeah.” Not one of the test subjects should ever have to be accused of being part of the project, they were only the unwitting chattel that the Consortium experimented on. The poor souls. It was a nit-picky detail, but one that he was a stickler about.

“Sorry.”

At least the kid had the intelligence to know when he'd hit a raw nerve. He could feel Sam's gaze moving over his augmentations and scars more thoughtfully this time, appraising them. When he saw Sam silently sounding out the digits of the scarification barcode on his left shoulder, he knew what was coming next.

“You were another victim of it, weren't you?”

He didn't need to say anything for Sam to know he was right. Suddenly he wanted to throw a shirt on to hide the history that had been recorded in mangled flesh and grafted technology. Would he have been able to sense Sam's condolences so well if his eyes were still organic, if he didn't have his SIA giving him a running commentary on the minute changes in Sam's behaviour? He'd never been overly concerned with how he looked, modesty a lost concept on him, but he didn't feel right having Sam look at him like that. “We all were, in some way or another. The Consortium screwed over a lot of people, and now they're gearing up to screw over a whole lot more. Madison won't be the last person to suffer at their hands.”

Pushing past Sam, he started for his bedroom. He wasn't surprised to hear Sam trailing along in his wake. Putting the goram kid out of his thoughts for two minutes, he picked out a black shirt from a drawer full of them and slipped it on. The poly-cotton blend felt like insufficient armour to protect him from his past reflected at him in Sam's gaze. This kid really needed to stop whatever it was that he'd done to him. If he wasn't sure that the kid was mundane, he would have accused him of working magic on him. However he'd seen often enough how it looked when Lilith did just that and was intimately aware of how that looked. Sam was no adept or magic user. He didn't really know what Sam was though.

Finally he looked over, Sam was leaning against the doorjamb of his room watching him. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“I get it now.”

“You do?” Hell, he sure didn't, so he'd be glad if Sam enlightened him.

“I kept trying to figure out what your angle was,” and he looked ashamed enough about this morning that Lucifer didn't interrupt him, “but I didn't really consider the fact that you had your own reason to hate them, to want to expose their secrets.” Shoving his hands into his pants, he looked out past Lucifer at the window. A drizzle had started and a few droplets had found their way onto the glass, the city outside dimming under the slate grey clouds.

It was probably best to leave the explanation at that and put it all behind him. Instead he heard himself asking, “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Only seems fair. Go ahead.”

“I could tell when I first met you that you weren't plain, old human, some type of hybrid, right?”

“Yeah. I don't know if I was born this way or if the Consortium made me into this, but I've got some demon blood in me.” He flexed his right hand, watching the fingers curl into a fist. “It's nothing physically noticeable besides my eyes,” eyes that went black like a demons when he was tense and were golden when he was calm. “I've got a few powers, but nothing to write home about.”

“Such as?” Lucifer moved passed Sam, wanting to get their discussion out of his bedroom. He knew it was all innocent but he wasn't sure how much longer he could trust his chivalry to hold out. Better to have chaperones.

Sam rolled his shoulder, “Medium strength telekinesis, slight precognition, and enhanced reflexes when I drink demon blood, although maybe any metatype would work, I've just never really tried any other blood. I have a bad enough reputation already with my bounty, I don't need people mistakenly thinking I'm a vampire as well.” He laughed, trying to make the statement less serious with marginal success.

“Alright Dracula, that's good to know. I guess if you end up needing an extra boost while you're in there, I could collect a vial of mine for you or something.” He was a little surprised by the shock on Sam's face. “What?”

“I just... wow. That's kind of an incredible offer. Most people who hear that I drink demon blood on occasion give me AA pamphlets, not offer to open up their veins for me. It's just... out of the ordinaire.”

Maybe it was at that, but Lucifer didn't mind and if his blood could help Sam out of a pickle, well then he'd be helping someone with this crazy mission of his. Everyone was going to be in enough danger as it was, least he could do was offer Sam an edge. “Yeah well don't go telling people about it, I've got a reputation as a hard-ass, bastard Shadowrunner to maintain here. If people think I'm going soft it's nothing but work, work, work all the time.”

Sam chuckled, “No, we wouldn't want that. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me.” It seemed that their talk had put Sam in a much better mood, his tension and irascibility from earlier were all but gone. He looked around, noticing that during the entire time it took to have their discussion Madison hadn't wandered in. “Where's Maddy?”

Having finally returned to the bathroom to collect his abandoned drink, Lucifer had to switch tracks to follow where the conversation had just gone. “Oh, I met her on my way up this morning, she said she was going out for some air.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes, I wasn't paying attention to the time just then.” He'd had other, far more pressing matters to worry over.

“Okay, thanks. I'm, uh, I'm gonna go find her. With everything that's happened, I'd feel better not having her be off alone right now.” Toeing into his shoes, he added, “And thanks again.” With that Sam was out the front door and momentarily out of Lucifer's hair.

He took a deep breath and relished in the knowledge that for the moment he had two less people to worry about. Hopefully Lilith hadn't been around to witness their little male bonding ritual. Looking around it seemed that for once he had caught a break, as she didn't materialise out of the woodwork crowing about how adorable his man crush on Sam was.

G4b3's avatar interrupted his peaceful moment, **-** **Hey boss, just wanted to let you know that Azazel has arrived and is on his way up the stairs**

 **//Thanks G4b3. I'll go greet him. Get everyone ready in the living room.** Lucifer chugged down the rest of his bourbon all at once, wishing that there was simply more time but knowing it wasn't possible. It was time to face the music.

 

010101010101010

 

Considering that his team had a mole to worry about and only marginal trust of Azazel, the war council had gone well so far, which was saying something. Then again so far all they'd done was get introductions out of the way and make sure that everyone was roughly on the same page about what was at stake and what needed to be done. G4b3 had the rather ingenious idea of throwing a holo-panel up against one of the walls, sharing it with all of their ARIs. It reminded Lucifer of the old school white board, everyone stepping up to write their ideas down and trying not to smudge any of what was already up there. This holo-panel had significant advantages, no smudging, wireless interfacing, and its inherent archivability.

G3b3 had also offered to be the secretary for the meeting, beneficial with how fast the man could transcribe. Score one for the hacker.

“In view of the fact that we have a mole, I want to keep most of this a bit vague, and I'm going to leave a lot of the plan up to each of you to decide in the moment.” Lucifer was perched on the back of the couch, feet on the cushions to either side of Lilith. It was only partially to have enough space for everyone else to have a regular seat. His humble flat hadn't ever had much call for entertaining more than two people, so the couch and one armchair had always been plenty.

Azazel was the one who looked the most out of his element, but inversely he was also the only person who looked actually comfortable. Gone was his crisp three piece suit and aristocratic air, in its place he had a mirthful smirk and what looked like a black tactical suit. He was obviously ready to go at a moments notice. “That seems reasonable. I'm surprised you're even holding this much of a meeting knowing that you have a leak.”

Castiel broke in to answer that question, “Because we need to have a baseline for everyone to coordinate with. To distrust everyone and go in without any plan might keep the mole from knowing enough to report in, but it also means no one else knows either.” It was a compromise between the two extremes, hopefully one that would be enough to keep them all alive.

“I don't doubt the rationale behind the approach, it is the best option,” the demon agreed.

Lilith was distracted for a moment as she added a few points of interest to the board, her posts going up with a silver outline. “I've found a few employees that I can borrow identities to get into the building,” but she didn't post any names or faces. “What plans of the two towers that G4b3 has gotten,” she pulled up the holographic reconstruction of the building, splitting it open for a cut away view of both and showing four glowing points of interest, “showed that there are two terminals that have the security access to open the mainframe room. These two. The top two locations are possible terminals that interface with Solitary's control. The problem is G4b3 found two different plans and they vary on this point, so I'm not sure if it means that one is a dead end or possibly a trap.”

There was far too many details that they just didn't have, too many holes in their intel. It wasn't exactly comforting to think about it.

“I never was on the upper levels of the towers,” Lucifer added, throwing up his own notes about the lower levels and what types of security he had been privy to. “They will likely have changed things since I'd been there, so take this with a grain of salt.” He tossed up a few pictures of scenes from his past, automated laser systems, drones, air quality control systems, nerve gas, and troops. Lots of troops.

An odd sense of deja vu struck him as he looked at a few of the old photographs, the nagging sensation that he'd forgotten something important. Of course he knew that there was plenty he'd forgotten from his time with the Eden Project and later during his stay in Solitary, but this felt different. Like a name on the tip of his tongue, he tried to plumb the shape of the hole to guess at what he was missing. However he got distracted from that when he realized the conversation had been continuing on while he'd been stuck thinking about forgotten memories.

“The spirits have agreed to lend me their aid, so I will be defending our exit, and seeing as we have to maintain several clear escape routes, I'll have quite a large area to cover.”

“That's where I can help,” Azazel chipped in. “I will be lending you some of my best men, both human and demon. I have hand picked a few men who have as much reason as I do to want to see the Consortium fail with their plans.”

“I will appreciate the assistance. The spirits are powerful, but certain tasks are difficult for them, like asking a tsunami to give you a single glass of ice water.”

“They lack finesse, eh?” G4b3 said.

“Something like that, yes.”

“So I'll be running around through the building, G4b3 has the com van, Cas and demons have the exits, I assume that means Azazel is going in with you?” Lilith asked.

Lucifer nodded, “He's the best hand to hand fighter, and Solitary's confined spaces mean it's likely going to come down to who can soak the most damage and dish it right back.”

It wasn't hard to see that Lilith wanted to be going with Lucifer, but she also knew she was uniquely suited for the job she was already going to be doing.

“So what are we missing, anything?” G4b3 piped up again, chewing on a rock candy that he'd seemingly appropriated via magic.

“Us.”

The whole group turned to see Sam and Madison standing by the door.

“We're going to be looking for their records, but until we find that, we'd both be happy to help you all in any way we can.” Sam and Madison both had the look of people who had resigned themselves to the fact that they might be dead by tomorrow.

“And that doctor of yours,” G4b3 added helpfully, enjoying the show as Lucifer slowly became the leader of a small army of people. He knew just how much Lucier hated having to be commander over other people. It was downright comedic gold that Lucifer was having to do so now.

“Alright, alright. Doc will be with you in he com van G4v3, I want him monitoring vitals from afar. If we can get anyone injured back out to him at the end of the night, so be it. But he doesn't owe me enough to be asked to dive into the maw of Hell. And you two,” Lucifer looked back over to them, “And you two... you two can come with me at first. I'll show you where you'll need to peel off to get to records, but until then you can at least carry some guns and try not to get yourselves killed.” Great, somehow he knew it would end up with him babysitting them. Gorammit.

Again he had the feeling that he was forgetting something. He'd go over the special precaution he'd been planning with G4b3 in private right before the run, but that wasn't it either. What was it?

Shelving the annoying feeling for the time being, he clapped his hands and looked around at the six other faces all staring back at him. “There's a few other odds and ends to work out, but I would suggest that if you have any affairs to put in order, you do so now. We're going up a ridiculously powerful megacorporation and there's every likelihood we'll all be dead by tomorrow. Writing up a Will or calling a loved one wouldn't be a bad idea.”


End file.
